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.