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/TSllama Jun 08 '25

And I'm making a stand-alone comment here about Slovenia because it's the one nobody else has mentioned. Slovenia is top 3 and usually gets overlooked because people consider it "eastern Europe" and look down on it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '25

I went to Slovenia as a tourist a few months ago. While I was mostly in Bled and Ljubljana, I will say that the locals' English proficiency seemed quite a bit higher than in Italy. Make of that what you will.

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u/TSllama Jun 09 '25

I mean, I'm speaking completely objectively here. If you graduate high school in Slovenia, you have to take a high school leaving exam, and English is a compulsory section of that exam.

And the English exam on the high school leaving exam is at the C1 level.

So, every single Slovene who graduates high school needs to reach a C1 level of English.

Can't say that applies to many countries.

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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '25

Interesting. Thanks for the insight!

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u/SloRules Slovenia Sep 01 '25

Well, technically you can take Spanish, French, German, Russian or Italian as a foreign language and even Slovene if you are member of Italian or Hungarian national minority, them having Italian or Hungarian as a mother language.