France demands that its future leaders must speak English

That's a very interesting article.
I think that us, the French, are very proud of our language. It seems that most of French people consider that speaking English is not something obvious to get a nice job or to feel integrate in society. The french is a beautiful rich language, that's sure', but things tend to show that english is the common language in business and international politic.
Seeing the French president having a poor english is a bit shameful maybe

Scientists, to be understood, must speak and write currently English. International conferences are in English, the only international language, and without translation, which is a luxury out of reach for most people. May be it is regrettable, but this fact cannot be bypassed. It is a shame that our politicians (especially french politicians) are generally unable to speak English in public. Recently, one of our ministry of foreign affairs was unable to speak English without the presence of an interpret, thus was unable to take the phone. It is not necessary to explicit the laugh of the journalists when they were informed !

Rather reading that than being blind !