Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

In 1994 France passed a law banning the use of English words in official documents.

There followed a highly entertaining (if you like that sort of thing) debate in the UK House of Commons as to whether to retaliate by banning French words[1][2]. The difference being, they were only joking while the French were deadly serious.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH0wvkZmGKQ&t=70

[2] https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1994-07-05/debates/8a1...

It's a pity that France does this because it diminishes them and makes the French act in ways that make zero sense. Once I got called to France for an in person meeting regarding some work for a French company. They insisted on having the meeting in French. I ended up sitting in on a meeting that went absolutely nowhere until they finally switched to English after me pointing out that English isn't my first language either and that if they wanted to have the meeting in Dutch in stead it would be fine by me but I'm not going to have a meeting where I'm at a serious disadvantage in understanding and speaking.

One elderly gentleman left the meeting, it turned out that he didn't speak English and was the one that had insisted the meeting be in French and after that we got along just fine.