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    English Proficiency in Europe 2025 [OC]
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    English Proficiency in Europe 2025 [OC]


    English Proficiency in Europe 2025 [OC]

    Posted by P26601

    View 48 Comments

    48 Comments

    1. Mirar on

      They should have used England, Scotland, Ireland as reference values.

      Also the ratings from Germany confuses me. It’s easier to find someone that speaks English in Czechia than in Germany.

    2. AlexMTBDude on

      While I don’t doubt the source there is no way that Germans (and Austrians) are more proficient in English, in practice, than the Nordic countries. Just try travelling through the countries and speaking English with a random person.

    3. FIR3W0RKS on

      England is probably in the 300’s on this map judging off the idiots I went to school with lol

    7. Troelski on

      This map runs counter to all my experiences living and travelling in Europe. Romania, Poland and Portugal having similar profeciency to Scandinavia feels kinda ludicrous.

    8. tristepin222 on

      It’s quite interesting that English proficiency is low in Switzerland

      English is taught at school, and there are many English speaking foreigners

      I am not sure why it is that low, ig the french and Italian part have the lowest score?

    9. Troelski on

      Wait is this data just based on the people who have taken this EF test? Not general populations?

    13. ShinyGrezz on

      Over the summer I went to stay with a friend in Italy, he lives in an area that sees much more local tourism than international. And yeah, we did not meet anybody else the entire week outside of my friend and his parents who spoke a lick of English. Friendly people, to be sure. But no English. So, this tracks.

    14. turb0_encapsulator on

      From what I’ve seen, it seems like the average Scandinavian can read and write English better than the average American. Half this country is borderline illiterate.

    16. elleasar on

      It hurts that everyone here complains about the unrealistic findings but no one bothered to check the sources: In the report it says that those are test scores – not an evaluation of the whole population. The sampling bias is even mentioned: Only people interested in learning English would take this online test. It skews towards young, educated people with internet access.

    18. AlpineEsel on

      I never understand how people can upvote that nonsense. Do they not have any critical thinking at all?

    21. stygger on

      Countries that dub their media should realistically be lower than those that don’t. The number for Germany seems outright incorrect, unless this is something specific like reading comprehension.

    22. Dodecadron on

      There are a lot of comments about how this can’t be right for country X. The data is from https://www.ef.com/assetscdn/WIBIwq6RdJvcD9bc8RMd/cefcom-epi-site/reports/2025/ef-epi-2025-english.pdf. 

      The results are based on people voluntary taking a language test. This is NOT a random sample from the population. For example 85% of respondents are younger than 35. From the report:

      Although the sample of test takers for
      the EF EPI is biased toward respondents
      who are interested in pursuing language
      study and younger adults, the sample is
      roughly balanced between male and female
      respondents and represents adult language
      learners from a broad range of ages.

      • Female respondents comprised 46% of
      the overall sample, male respondents
      40% and respondents who did not
      provide gender information 14%.

      • The average age of respondents who
      provided age information was 26, with
      85% of those respondents under the age
      of 35, and 99.5% under the age of 60.
      10% of respondents did not provide their
      birth year.

    25. nebulnaskigxulo on

      I like how there’s no data to tell how proficient the English are at speaking English.

    26. zeefox79 on

      in my experience Sweden and the Netherlands have better English proficiency than we do ourselves🥲

    28. Zanian19 on

      Yeah no way. As a Dane who grew up right on the border, I knew that whenever I had to cross it, I had to get used to speaking my broken German, because their English was pure gobbledygook.

    29. ElendX on

      Reading through the comments, the data is coming from the education first website, and it is based on the test results of the people actually using the website.

      So, countries like Cyprus, Germany and all the Nordics, where either English is part of the school curriculum or they have other tests that make this one redundant (like the English O Levels or IELTS).

      This data has such narrow usage, they might as well not be reported as representative to the public.

    30. mirvge on

      I’ve met 0 people that doesn’t know English in Sweden. Probably 100+ / every other person in Portugal. So this is clearly incorrect…

    31. TheKaney on

      I mean, I’ve been to Budapest last year and only about 20% of people could actually utter something in English.

    36. Training_Advantage21 on

      Greece with higher proficiency in English than Cyprus… right. There are some Greeks who know good English, but as a national index this is hard to believe.

    37. Chogolatine on

      I’ve been to Sarajevo, city center, and the waiter couldn’t even count to 12 in English, we had to show with our hands. Basically ditto for Portugal. And those aren’t just a “you talked to the one guy who did not speak English” situation, I legit had trouble having a simple convo in English with a regular person.
      I have no idea where those data come from but they contradict my experience very hardly.

    38. YetAnotherGuy2 on

      This map must be using school data as basis. As others have remarked, this map feels off compared to every day experience.

      First off, anyone in East Europe will have had Russian instead of English as foreign language 35 years ago. Anyone who is ca 45+ will have had at least some years of Russian instead of English. Trying to speak to anyone over 50 in English is certainly going to be an exercise in futility unless you are very, very lucky.

      Secondly, it’s a question if how much English people are confronted with in their daily lives. Some countries – for example Germany – dub everything on TV fairly well (let’s not open that can of worms), so the need to use English after school is low. Other countries don’t have that extensive (or good) dubbing, so they tend to watch English movies with subtitles. That exposure helps in learning English to a certain degree.

      Thirdly, YouTube and the Internet has driven the use of English, so anyone who uses it a bit more extensively will be fairly good at passively understanding primarily American English. I’ve seen a while genre of German which (more or less sarcastic depending on either) uses germanized English words. For example the German sub for stock bets is called “Mauerstraßewetten” which is literally “Wall street bets”. It only makes sense if you know the English version, because Mauerstraße has no specific meaning in German.

      So yeah, this number might represent the level of English education you *could* have not heavily depends on your circumstances you are living in.

    39. robgod50 on

      Shame there’s no data for my home country. I’ve been to Norway & Denmark and they speak English way better than us.

    40. amora_obscura on

      Germany is absolutely not higher than Nordic/Scandinavian countries. One of the big reasons is that English-language movies are dubbed into German.

    41. awildencounter on

      France being rated moderate is so strange, they’re actively trying to get young French people to speak more French because English is slowly overtaking it as most popular language.

    45. saltexx on

      I’m very surprised to see Germany have a higher score than Scandinavia. I guess the world has really changed (or something is a bit off with this data).

    46. blasharga on

      These numbers tell me nothing? On a scale of what to what ?

      Also, no way germany is on level with nordic countries

    47. dcwt2010 on

      if you go by written English, I’m fairly confident my neighbourhood in England would rank quite low. These would be all locals though, it’s a indictment of our poor education system and how those in lower income often don’t see the value of education.