“Class, how many of you speak Brexit?” – A look at language teaching in the EU

The UK’s main language now completely dominates the EU’s teaching in schools

Montage © Facts4EU.Org

98.3% of pupils going to secondary school in the EU now learn English

English is over three times more popular in EU schools than the next most popular language, French.

The EU Commission has just published its figures for the learning of foreign languages in schools across its 27 member countries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, English dominates. What is perhaps more surprising is the list of languages which follow English in popularity.

In today’s report Facts4EU.Org looks at:

The most popular languages in lower secondary schools
The Babel Tower of Brussels - The EU’s 24 official languages
The EU’s law of multilingualism

1. Language teaching in the EU27’s lower secondary schools

The vast majority of pupils in primary and secondary education in the EU study at least one foreign language. In the latest figures for 2020, 96.1% of pupils in primary education, 98.4% of students in lower secondary and 90.3% in upper secondary education in the EU studied at least one foreign language.

In 2020, English was the most commonly studied foreign language for all pupils at EU27 lower secondary schools, with 98.3% of them learning it. This has increased since 2016, 'despite Brexit'.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Most popular foreign languages in the EU27’s lower secondary schools

[Source: EU Commission’s official statistics agency Eurostat, figures for 2020, published 23 Sept 2022.]

Note: We assume that Estonian appears in the list because of the presence of so many ethnic Russian families in Estonia for whom Estonian would be in effect be a foreign language, but have not been able to verify this. We can only report the figures in the EU's database.

The presence of Russian in fifth place may surprise some readers. Italian was beaten into sixth place because of the high concentration of Russian language teaching in some EU27 countries, notably the Baltic states.

When it comes to older secondary school students the order changes. English remains dominant but Spanish overtakes French to claim second place, followed by German and Italian.

2. The Babel Tower of Brussels - The EU’s 24 official languages

Every time new members have joined the EU, they have added to the number of official languages. Below we show how these official languages have grown over time.

1958: Dutch, French, German, Italian
1973: Danish, English
1981: Greek
1986: Portuguese, Spanish
1995: Finnish, Swedish
2004: Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian
2007: Bulgarian, Irish, Romanian
2013: Croatian

Despite Brexit, English remains an official EU language because it is used in Ireland and Malta. In reality of course it is used by almost everyone in every EU agency and institution.

The EU’s bodies of meetings interpreters and of translators of official documents have of course grown significantly. There are now over 550 possible combinations of languages. The EU’s translation agency itself says there are “around 750” combinations and we can only imagine they must be including languages not on the official list.

3. The EU’s ‘founding principle’ of multilingualism

Ironically, the EU Commission’s website in its section on languages describes the EU’s policy on ‘multilingualism’ with a grammatical error. Here is what they say:

“One of the EU’s founding principles is multilingualism. This policy aims to:

“communicating with its citizens in their own languages
“protecting Europe’s rich linguistic diversity
“promoting language learning in Europe”

Multilingualism is enshrined in the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. EU nationals have the right to use any of the 24 official languages to communicate with the EU institutions and the institutions must reply in the same language.

Observations

Rejoiners will of course seek to dismiss our report and diminish the UK’s influence and importance once again. They will no doubt say that English dominates language teaching in the EU27’s schools because of the USA, not the UK.

This is a factor, certainly, but we would ask those who denigrate our country on a regular basis some questions.

Who do they think gave the USA (and many other parts of the world) the English language in the first place?
What was the preferred destination in the EU for six million EU27 nationals who have settled outside of their home country?
Which language is now ‘de rigueur’ for working for the EU or doing business within the EU?

None of the answers to these questions have anything to do with the USA today.

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[ Sources: EU Commission official statistics agency ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sun 25 Sept 2022

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Reader Comments 14

1. John Hardman , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 09:20:

Another great report, despite BREXIT 🇬🇧

2. Sparky , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 12:58:

English is a Germanic language brought to Britain by the Angles but significantly changed over time to include around 29% French and 29% Latin influenced words as well as Norse. Next headline will be how the world still uses Greenwich Mean Time (UTC) despite Brexit.

3. terence patrick hewett , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 13:44:

@Sparky
The root is Indo-European, whose earliest written extant language is Sanscrit: so what.

4. Adam , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 15:51:

I see the dimwit sparky is back what's the matter has the Remoan in Europe campaign blocked you from their website for being an extremist Remoaner bore

5. Buster , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 17:56:

Of course English is the most spoken second language in the EU. This is because the Americans speak it.
It is quite amusing watching the Little Englanders get all hard when, in fact, their Brexit is an embarrassing failure.

6. ste , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 18:08:

choosing elected accountable leaders will NEVER be a failure, something the evil goose stepping remoaners don't get

7. One eyed king , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 18:28:

London Brent and New York crude make English the language of business. End of

8. Buster , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 18:47:

Lol. Liz Truss - selected by around 80,000 mostly elderly racists - is apparently both elected and accountable. Despite having zero mandate from the actual people for her batshit crazy far-right nonsense.

9. Robert Mcdonald , Sunday, September 25, 2022, 20:23:

Good to see the tory party doing what they were elected for, make changes that are most likely to lead to the economic well being of all of us. Less tax, small government, growing businesses, more jobs, better pay for all.

10. jon livesey , Monday, September 26, 2022, 02:02:

I have been predicting for a while here that the EU's real problem is Italy and today it looks like that is becoming a fact. The Italian voters have rejected Draghi and the "reforms" he put in place to get EU money - which was mostly loans, anyway - and now the EU will have to deal with yet another sceptical member. Italy cannot afford to keep up with France and Germany, so I think we will see a Poland-Italy-Hugary anti-Brussels bloc. If that happens, a significant chunk of the EU will then be in opposition to EU rules. And as the anarchist like to say: "They can't jail everybody."
I would modestly suggest that this is more significant than why so many people speak English. It is more significant because your ideas about language are opinions, but the EU gradually breaking up into mutually hostile blocs will be fact.

14 comments, page 1 of 2

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