Does English need to be still the official language in the EU?

The UK is now officially out of the EU and there has been a suggestion of removing English as an official language. English has been the European working language but France’s EU minister, Clement Beaune, expressed an idea of each country focusing again on its own language to maintain a “linguistic diversity”, as he described the official language used within the EU as a type of broken English.

Each country must keep and hone its own language but as an official language, English is widely used. Many institutions in the EU and many member countries operate in English and removing English as an official language can have an impact.

However, even if the UK is now out of the EU, English still remains the official language of two EU member countries: “Ireland and Malta”. In some member countries, English is almost a second language. For example, in Croatia, that has become a member in 2013, over 80% of its population can speak English.

The European Commission agreed and has been working together with national governments to reach an educational goal that is to learn at least two foreign languages and to begin learning foreign languages at an early age.

The report from EU informs that 48% of the students in upper secondary education studied two or more foreign languages in 2018. The countries with the highest share were  Romania with 98% and Finland 94% and on the other side of the scale was Greece with only 1% of the students in upper secondary education studying two or more foreign languages in 2018.

English is the most commonly studied foreign language in upper secondary education in the EU with 87% of student learning English in upper secondary education in 2018. French was the second with (19%), followed by German and Spanish (both around 18%).

This statistic shows that English is an important language in education, politics, business, and even simple things such as travelling for pleasure. Being able to communicate in a common language means opening doors to each other cultures.