Eurostat – Greece’s ranking in foreign languages is simply ​​disappointing [Chart]

Knowledge of foreign languages ​​is an essential tool for the citizens of the European Union – and not only – for communication with other cultures, professional development, travel, contact with new cultures, peoples and societies.

It is well known that such skills are required and encouraged in many workplaces and that they can facilitate communication in a variety of other contexts.

According to Eurostat, in 2019, 59% of upper secondary students (ISCED level 34) studied two or more foreign languages ​​in the EU.

In two EU countries, Luxembourg and France, all secondary general education students studied two or more foreign languages. Estonia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Finland also had a large proportion of students studying two or more languages ​​(all 99%), followed by Slovakia (98%), Croatia (95%) and Slovenia (92%). .

Greece at the bottom

Eurostat data paint a very unpleasant picture for Greece, as it not only figures at the end of the ranking, but is by far the worst of all EU member states, in terms of this performance. Only 1% of students in secondary general education studied two or more foreign languages ​​in 2019.

A low percentage of students was also recorded in: Portugal (6%), Ireland (12%), Italy (25%) and Spain (27%).

The most popular language

In 2019, English was the most frequently studied foreign language at the level of secondary general education in the EU, with 96% of students learning it. Spanish ranks second (26%), followed by French (22%), German (20%) and Italian (3%). In addition, Russian was the non-Community language most frequently learned in the EU (3%), especially in Estonia (68%) and Latvia (57%), followed by Lithuania (30%) and Bulgaria (24%).