diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index bc4327cb0..6a485ce4c 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ STRIP     = strip
 PANDOC    = pandoc
 SED       = sed
 RPMBUILD  = rpmbuild
-GIT2DEBCL = ./tools/git2debcl
+GIT2DEBCL = LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 ./tools/git2debcl
 PKGCONFIG = pkg-config
 
 GIT_REPO = 0
diff --git a/tools/git2debcl b/tools/git2debcl
index 8d0423ce8..fd2ba2fe2 100755
--- a/tools/git2debcl
+++ b/tools/git2debcl
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ import subprocess
 import argparse
 
 def call(args):
-    return subprocess.Popen(args,stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0].decode()
+    return subprocess.Popen(args,stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0].decode('utf-8')
 
 def git_tags():
     args = ["git", "tag", '-l']