JACQUES CHIRAC may be engaged in an all-out assault on perfidious Albion, but French business has taken a wholly different approach.

According to a new study, a majority of big French companies has adopted English as the official language.

“Today, someone who does not know how to speak English is like someone who did not know how to read or write 50 years ago,” said the report from the French branch of Educational Testing Service (ETS) Europe, the language group.

The survey underlined how globalisation is forcing French business and industry to discard centuries of hostility towards their rivals across the Channel, in an effort to compete better internationally.

Among 26 of France’s most important firms questioned by ETS Europe, 16 gave English as their official working language. Of these, nine have dropped French altogether and seven have placed English and French on a level footing.

“This means that documents must be written in English,” said Bertrand Moneger, head of markets at ETS Europe-France. “And if there is one English speaker present at the meeting, then it must be held in English even if everyone else there is French.”

Thierry le Metayer, the head of ETS Europe-France, added: “We expected a lot more reticence from firms. But with the exception of a handful of very insular groups, most say English is essential.”

The report said: “An overwhelming majority of managers, if not all of them, use English daily as their working language and must switch indifferently from one language to another for meetings, e-mails and other workplace exchanges.”

A majority of the firms questioned said that the trend would accelerate. “In five or six years, most personnel managers think all official company documents will be in English.”

The survey also found that an ability to speak English was a basic employment criterion for managerial posts. Without it, applicants stood virtually no chance — whatever other qualifications they possessed. “English is no longer the optional extra . . . It is the minimum.”

Among the groups that have adopted English as a working language are Aventis, the pharmaceutical laboratory, AXA, the insurer, and Danone, the food group. Even Renault, a symbol of the French industrial soul, insists that managers pass English tests.

Last year, however, unions at General Electric Medical Systems won a court ruling that the firm’s English-only manuals breached a law that requires all foreign expressions to be translated into French inside the workplace.

A union spokesman said: “Sometimes meetings between French staff are held in English. That is absurd.”