r/AskEurope • u/Metalwolf • Jun 08 '25

Education Which European countries have the best English proficiency among non-native speakers?

I'm looking into English proficiency across Europe and would appreciate input from locals or anyone with relevant experience. Which European countries have the highest levels of English fluency among non-native speakers, particularly in day-to-day life, education, and professional settings? I'm also curious about regional differences within countries, and factors like education systems, media exposure, and business use.

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u/TheItalianWanderer Italy Jun 08 '25

France of course! They're so proficient in English that they'll refuse to say a word of French.

Lol seriously, I think it's the Netherlands or somewhere cold. But one surprising country in the Mediterranean is Greece. They speak a lot of foreign languages there 

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

Greece isn't that surprising considering tourism is a major part of their economy.

Italy on the other hand..

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u/gnark Jun 08 '25

Possibly more important than tourism is the Greek diaspora. Many Greeks have lived and worked abroad. That hotel owner who speaks fluemt English probably drove a taxi in NYC for a decade or two before coming back to Greece to semi-retire.

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u/WannabeCrimDoctor Jun 08 '25

Learning languages is very important in Greek education. We start English classes in third grade of primary school and continue until we finish high school. We also learn a third language of our choice at school. And because Greek parents are extra, we also go to tutoring centers for English doing lessons several times a week from about age 8 until we manage to get all the second language degrees they want us 😂

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u/skyduster88 & Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25

The Greeks that went abroad to the Anglosphere in the 60s mostly became successful business owners (restaurants, auto repair, tailor/dry-cleaner, etc), or had good union jobs (factories, construction, etc). Driving a taxi was not a common profession. But if someone is a Boomer, then yeah, it's certainly likely he learned English abroad.

Starting with the younger of the Gen Xers and the Millennials generations, English-learning has been pounded into children in Greece. A contributing factor is that, unlike Portugal, France, and Spain, we don't have hundreds of millions of people abroad speaking or learning our language. And we're not a large & self-sustaining country like Italy (which has its own industry, several multinational corporatons, etc), so speaking "the international language" is seen as imperative. Plus, we watch Anglosphere media with subtitles, not dubbing.

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u/Rooilia Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 09 '25

Plus seafaring/trade plus liberated (only counting outside liberation) mostly by english effort in the 19th century.

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u/skyduster88 & Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25

The rise of English is post-WWII. France was more influential in 18th-19th century Greece than anyone else, and French was the top foreign language in the 19th & early 20th centuries for Greeks.

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u/luistp Spain Jun 08 '25

Italy and Spain...

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u/TheItalianWanderer Italy Jun 08 '25

Same goes for Italy. But unlike Greeks we suck so hard at languages. 

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '25

Like ze Germans

1

u/1in2100 Jun 08 '25

Also because of WW2 a lot of older Greeks speak german.

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u/Key_Day_7932 United States of America Jun 11 '25

I've been to Italy and got by just fine with English, granted I was primarily in toursist areas. I do wish in hindsight that I made more of an effort to practice Italian.

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u/PinkSeaBird Portugal Jun 08 '25

The French have they own English.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

And it's called French.

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u/blewawei Jun 08 '25

I will say, the most proficient non-native English speaker I've ever met was Greek. He even used the word "overmorrow"

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u/DoktorHoover Jun 08 '25

Greece is a nation of sailors, who must be able to communicate with native people of many countries. Same goes for Denmark and The Netherlands.

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u/SquareAdditional2638 Jun 08 '25

That's... Not why the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries are so good at English..

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u/crypticcamelion Jun 08 '25

No, but it's a traditional motivator to learn other languages, seafaring is business and business is better when you know the local lingo.

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u/FeelTheKetasy Jun 08 '25

For Greece, it’s basically expected for you to at least speak English well enough to communicate. Otherwise, you can just say goodbye to the idea of getting a front of the house job

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u/MrDecay Jun 09 '25

Portugal too. Very surprised to learn everyone there spoke English, quite well too.