The Académie de la Carpette anglaise, which may be translated as the "English Doormat Academy" (the word carpette means both "rug" and "fawner"), is a French organisation that awards an annual prize to "members of the French élite who distinguish themselves by relentlessly promoting the domination of the English language over the French language in France and in European institutions." Whether admired or despised for its tongue-in-cheek rhetoric, the Academy has captured the attention of many in the French-speaking world who genuinely fear that the growing pervasiveness of English will lead to the decline and ultimate demise of French. The Academy was created in 1999 by a group of four French-language associations. In 2001 a second award was introduced to spotlight "key figures and constituent bodies among the European and international nomenklatura who actively conspire to promote the use of English within European and international institutions". As one member of the Academy put it, its aim is "to reward all those obscure geniuses (...) who are only too ready to say: 'Welcome to our dearly beloved invaders!' as Ceramix proudly proclaimed in the album Asterix and the Big Fight." Like the Ig Nobel Prize, the English Doormat Award heaps ridicule on its recipients. Winners of the English Doormat Award 1999: Louis Schweitzer, CEO of Renault, for imposing the use of American English in its internal meeting reports. The runner-up was Claude Allègre, French minister of education, for declaring that "French people must stop considering English as a foreign language." 2000: Alain Richard, French Minister of Defence, for making it compulsory for French military personnel to speak English within the Eurocorps, which has no English-speaking nations among its members. 2001: Jean-Marie Messier, CEO of Vivendi Universal, for his unconditional promotion of English for all internal communication purposes. 2002: Jean-Marie Colombani, editor of Le Monde, for publishing a weekly (untranslated) selection from The New York Times, in English. 2003: The HEC Group, whose general manager, Bernard Ramanantsoa, declared: "To say that French is an international language of communication is laughable in this day and age." 2004: Claude Thélot, president of the Commission for National Debate on the Future of Schools, for declaring that English as a language of international communication should enjoy equal status with French in the school curriculum, and for recommending that undubbed American soaps should be broadcast on French television as an aid to learning English. Another nominee was