Language courses for adults do not start from nothing: most people in Europe meet at least one foreign language at school. Eurostat’s “Foreign language learning statistics” article (data extracted in April 2026, next update planned for April 2027) reports what pupils in EU countries were learning in 2024. This article summarises the main results. The figures cover EU Member States, not the United Kingdom, and count languages studied at school, not proficiency. They are general information, not a ranking of countries or courses.
What counts as a foreign language
Eurostat notes that some statistics treat official languages as foreign for reporting purposes. In Luxembourg, French and German are counted as foreign languages even though they are official languages, and in Finland students choose between Finnish and Swedish, both counted as foreign. In Belgium, the official languages are Dutch, French and German, which affects how English shares appear. The article covers primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education, and it flags several data notes such as undercoverage in some countries.
Primary school: English first
In 2024, 82.5% of primary pupils in the EU were learning English. Eurostat says learning English is mandatory in primary education in several EU countries, and that pupils tend to receive more instruction in their first foreign language than in later ones, which may magnify English’s apparent importance. Details from the article:
- all or nearly all (99% to 100%) primary pupils in Cyprus, Malta, Austria, Spain and Poland learnt English;
- between 90% and 97% did so in Latvia, France, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Croatia, Italy and Romania;
- in Belgium the share was 23.0%, reflecting the focus on other official state languages; and
- Luxembourg generally did not teach English in primary school, focusing on German, French and Luxembourgish.
Only 4.4% of EU primary pupils were learning French and 4.0% German. Luxembourg reported the highest shares for both (79.9% and 94.7%). Among primary pupils, 6.4% were learning two or more foreign languages, and Luxembourg (78.7%) was the only country where a majority were. The next highest were Latvia (41.4%), Greece (35.5%), Denmark (29.0%) and Finland (28.6%). Eurostat records that the EU share of primary pupils learning at least two languages rose from 4.6% in 2014 to 6.4% in 2024. It also notes that no foreign languages were taught in Irish primary education before September 2025, when a phased introduction of modern foreign languages began.
Lower secondary: more languages, more variety
By lower secondary level, 97.6% of EU pupils were learning English, virtually unchanged from 97.7% in 2014. All lower secondary pupils in Denmark, Slovenia and Sweden were learning English. Other languages were far more varied. In 2024, 30.3% of EU lower secondary pupils were learning French, 19.2% Spanish and 18.9% German.
Eurostat highlights some national patterns:
- French: Luxembourg had more than four fifths (82.6%), and Romania, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece all had more than half;
- Spanish: France was the only country with a majority (56.6%), followed by Sweden (47.0%); and
- German: Denmark (74.9%) and Luxembourg (71.9%) had large shares, with no other country above half.
Since 2014, Spanish gained (from 13.1% to 19.2%), while German fell by 4.1 percentage points and French by 3.4. Overall, 58.8% of lower secondary pupils learnt two or more foreign languages in 2024, down from 59.7% in 2014. Finland had the highest share (97.2%), while Ireland (5.2%), Hungary (5.6%) and Austria (7.5%) had the lowest.
Upper secondary: general versus vocational
Eurostat’s headline is that 89% of upper secondary pupils in the EU learnt English in 2024, including 96% in general programmes and 81% in vocational programmes. In Malta and Sweden all pupils learnt it. Denmark (50.8%) was the only country below 70%. Nearly half (49%) learnt two or more foreign languages.
Beyond English, slightly fewer than a fifth of upper secondary pupils learnt German (19.3%), Spanish (17.9%) or French (17.2%). Majorities were learning German in Luxembourg (69.6%) and Poland (62.1%), Spanish in France (60.6%), and French in Romania (84.7%), Luxembourg (70.5%), Cyprus (69.2%) and Belgium (52.6%). The gap between programme types was largest for Spanish: 27.6% of pupils in general programmes against 7.0% in vocational programmes.
For English in upper secondary education, the largest gains between 2014 and 2024 were in Germany (up 11.6 percentage points), Belgium (up 11.5) and Greece (up 10.6). Eurostat also notes that Portugal was the only country where the share learning English was higher in vocational than in general programmes (by 7.9 percentage points). For German, the EU share was 20.2% in general programmes and 18.0% in vocational ones, and Poland and Italy were the only countries where vocational shares were higher. For French, the shares were 20.1% in general and 14.7% in vocational programmes, and in Greece 32.9% of general-programme pupils learnt it against 0.7% in vocational programmes.
Interpreting the figures
Eurostat’s counts show who studies a language, not how well they learn it, and the article does not measure outcomes. Its data notes also warn that some figures are affected by undercoverage or by ancient languages being included, so small differences between countries should not be over-read.
The bottom line
Eurostat’s 2024 figures show English as the near-universal first foreign language in EU schools, with French, German and Spanish taught to much smaller shares and in strongly national patterns, and with a large minority of secondary pupils studying two or more languages. They describe EU school systems only, not adult learning and not the UK.
Sources
- Eurostat, “Foreign language learning statistics”, Statistics Explained (ec.europa.eu)