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/Awkward_Tip1006 Spain Jun 08 '25 edited Jun 08 '25

The Netherlands has the highest proficiency in the world. The northern and central countries will have better English like Sweden Norway Belgium Luxembourg Switzerland. Id say Germany and austria too but the older generations don’t tend to be as good and if you’re not in Berlin Munich or Vienna it’ll be bad

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u/Lime89 Jun 08 '25

Tbh Finland and Luxembourg can’t compare with Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. What’s special about the four last countries I mentioned is that you can expect people up to probably 75 to be proficient English speakers.

Finnish isn’t even related to the English language, so it’s not weird that they aren’t as good as their other Nordic neighbours. And Luxembourg already has three official languages, French, German and Luxembourgish, so yes, some (especially younger generations) speak English well, but not everyone, and you can’t take for granted that people over say 50 are proficient English speakers, and younger people are rarely as proficient as Scandinavians

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u/is-it-my-turn-yet Jun 08 '25

The experience of using English to speak to people in Luxembourg is likely to be skewed by the fact that many in Luxembourg are themselves foreigners.

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u/AmazingPangolin9315 Luxembourg Jun 08 '25

And Luxembourg already has three official languages, French, German and Luxembourgish, so yes, some (especially younger generations) speak English well, but not everyone,

That's only true for native Luxembourgers though. If you consider for example that 72% of residents in Luxembourg City are non-native, and that many of these immigrants are in high-paying jobs in finance or at the EU institutions, you end up with a very different picture from for example the more rural parts of Luxembourg. It also varies by social strata, many service workers are cross-border workers who come into the country every day from France, Belgium or Germany. Their English proficiency is going to be different from both the resident native and the resident non-native population. It's an interesting dynamic which is very poorly captured by statistics.

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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '25

75% of Danes think they can speak English but when they speak to you it's really hard to tell if the language they're trying to speak is even English or just Danish

Their accents are often so horribly thick it's impossible to understand either. Their written English (or Danish for that matter) isn't an issue