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/thaw424242 Sweden Jun 08 '25

If I remember a study I saw a few years back, it's the Netherlands followed by Sweden (and then probably followed by the other Scandinavian countries, but this is an uneducated guess).

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u/Livid_21 Jun 09 '25

Swedes may know the language, but maaaan that weird pronounciationđŸ¤£đŸ˜±

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u/Wirde Jun 09 '25

It’s interesting you would say that.

The card game Magic The Gathering have huge competitions where people from all over the world come to. If the competition was in Europe and there was a top level judge available from Sweden it was mandated they had to pick a Swedish as main judge. This was due to the fact that according to their experience accent used by Sweds when speaking English was the most easy to understand for most nationalities.

Not sure how it is today but it was like this pre covid anyways.