Strong support for mother tongue plus two

Today, 21 June 2012, the Commissionner Mrs Androulla Vassiliou announced the results of the 2012 Special Eurobarometer 386: "Europeans and their languages".

The new report on citizens' attitudes and behaviour towards multilingualism, foreign language learning and translation demonstrates that Europeans have very positive attitudes towards multilingualism.

According to the results, almost every European (98%) considers mastering foreign languages useful for their children's future and 88% think that knowing languages other than their mother tongue is useful for themselves.

Almost three quarters (72%) agree with the EU objective that everybody should learn at least two foreign languages and 77% think that improvement in language skills should be a policy priority. The trends regarding languages confirm that two thirds of Europeans (67%) consider English as one of the two most useful languages for themselves. The next most frequently mentioned languages include German (17%), French (16%), Spanish (14%) and Chinese (6%).

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