Anglicisms and pseudo-Anglicisms are scarcely a new phenomenon in French. A degree of cross-linguistic contamination has always been inevitable between such close neighbours (or ‘frères ennemis’) as Britain and France. In the last few decades, however, the question has taken on a clearly different dimension, as the prime source of Anglicisms in French is no longer Britain, but the United States. This paper looks at the issue of Anglicisms in France as an aspect of a much broader problem, namely the identity of Europe and its defence against perceived US domination in the economic, political and cultural fields.