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Swiss multilingualism has been suggested as a model for a unified Europe. In this country, the territoriality principle and political subsidiarity have supported a discourse on multilingualism for the purpose of ‘mutual understanding’. However, a conflict has recently upset the cohabitation of four national languages in Switzerland, resulting partly from conflicting responses to the spread of English in Swiss society. This paper discusses the struggle around the weighting of national languages versus English in educational language policy. The dominant discourse on multilingualism has been confronted with a globalising ideology, where competence in English is seen as a commodity to be acquired early. An economically powerful canton, Zurich, introduced English as a first additional language in primary school in 1998, triggering what has come to be known as Sprachenstreit, or ‘language strife’. An apparent compromise may not be stable as language issues have now been subjected to a referendum. The implications of the Swiss case are discussed in the light of European language policy.
