24/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - “Spontaneous” was the adjective used by the French delegation to describe the reaction of the French President when the President of UNICE spoke during the European Council on Thursday evening. After listening to the President of the European Trade Union Confederation and the President of ECB, Jacques Chirac stood up and left the room with his two Ministers in protest at the use of English by the President of the European employers' organisation. Ernest-Antoine Seillière had just explained that he was going to use English, “because that is the accepted business language of Europe today”. The reaction of the President of the Republic had nothing to do with the content of the UNICE President's speech, the French delegation explained on Thursday evening, trying to use the need to defend the EU's linguistic diversity as justification. “We left rather than having to listen to that: there's no other reason,” President Chirac told press on Friday, deploring the fact that a Frenchman had expressed himself in English.