The European Commission will organise, in partnership with the Council of Europe, the European Day of Languages on 26 September. But where exactly is Europe in terms of multilingualism?
The European Union has 24 official languages and some 60 regional and minority languages. In 2002, the Heads of State or Government set themselves the objective of ensuring that Europeans will be able to communicate in two languages in addition to their mother tongue. Education ministers renewed this commitment in 2019 by adopting one of the components of the education package, namely a recommendation on foreign language learning (see EUROPE 12024/20, 12257/21). This text recommends the acquisition of a first foreign language for social or professional purposes and, if possible, a second foreign language to enable interaction with a certain degree of fluency.
According to figures published in 2017 by Eurostat, 17 million pupils in lower secondary education (98.6% of all pupils at this level) were studying at least one foreign language in 2015. Of these, more than 10 million (58.8%) were learning two or more foreign languages. In contrast, less than 10% of lower secondary school students studied two or more foreign languages in Hungary (6.0%) and Austria (8.8%).
The working document prepared by the European Commission's Directorates-General and which has been leaked to the press suggests, among other things, that an initiative entitled ‘Voice of Europe’ should be put in place to facilitate language learning. In particular, this initiative recommends subtitling more films and offering language courses at an attractive price, with support of €5 million from the EU budget. See the text of Recommendation 2019/C 189/03 on page: https://bit.ly/2L38B3F (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean).