When you look at the linguistic abilities of the European peoples, England is far behind our European neighbours in terms of knowing second or third languages. This may actually be down to the fact that many British people feel that they can expect that most foreign communities will understand English anyway, so why should they bother.
The interesting thing about this is that it may actually be true. Latest figures suggest that as much as 51% of all adults within the EU know English to a degree, the highest in the continent, with both French and English being in wide-spread use among different countries’ people communicating with one another.
Even so, the EU has made it one of their goals to improve linguistic diversity within the EU, and have created numerous funds to help countries develop their language education, so that more people in the EU can speak a second or even a third language.