However, it may be possible to mitigate this unfairness. Van Parijs favours a system of subsidies through which Anglophones compensate non-Anglophones for some of the costs they incur while learning English (Van Parijs 2011: ch.2). Thus, efficiency and fairness can be reconciled, and there can be no fairness-based objection to using English as a lingua franca. Or so it is claimed.
But our ability to fairly distribute the costs of a common means of communication, I argue in this paper, is not independent of the choice of means. In fact, it may be highly infeasible to convince Anglophone countries to pay the necessary subsidies. A fairer distribution of costs may come about without the need to convince countries to make such costly transfers if we pursue alternative strategies. While moving towards a multilingual regime may be inefficient, the gains to fairness that it makes possible might outweigh this consideration. We should therefore not necessarily favour English as a way of communicating in Europe just because of its supposed efficiency.
