Foreign languages in the EU, 2022: where adults report knowing at least one

Published October 26, 2026

🇸🇮 Slovenia 🇸🇪 Sweden 🇪🇪 Estonia 🇱🇹 Lithuania 🇱🇺 Luxembourg 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🇫🇮 Finland 🇩🇰 Denmark 🇦🇹 Austria 🇩🇪 Germany 🇸🇰 Slovakia 🇭🇷 Croatia 🇧🇪 Belgium 🇨🇿 Czechia 🇫🇷 France 🇵🇱 Poland 🇬🇷 Greece 🇵🇹 Portugal 🇮🇹 Italy 🇮🇪 Ireland 🇪🇸 Spain 🇷🇴 Romania 🇭🇺 Hungary Family and education

In the 2022 Adult Education Survey, 74.7% of adults aged 25 to 64 in the EU said they knew at least one foreign language. The share ranged from 96.0% in Slovenia to 48.2% in Bulgaria. Here are the figures for all 27 countries, the most recent Eurostat has published.

JM Piqué / Unsplash

In 2022, 74.7% of adults aged 25 to 64 in the EU said they knew at least one foreign language, according to Eurostat's Adult Education Survey. The other 25.3% said they knew none. 37.6% reported knowing one foreign language, 24.7% two, and 12.3% three or more.

The Adult Education Survey runs every five or six years. The 2022 edition is the most recent one Eurostat has published; the figures were last updated in its database on 27 August 2026.

What the figures measure

The answers are self-reported: people say how many foreign languages they know, and nobody tests them. The number counts languages other than the person's native language. According to Eurostat, a language someone knows but does not use at home counts as foreign. In countries with more than one official language, such as Belgium, a person who speaks only one of them at home has the others counted as foreign languages. For people born abroad, the language of the country where they live can count as foreign too.

Eurostat also notes that countries may apply national preferences when they run the survey, so the line between native and foreign language is not drawn in exactly the same way everywhere.

The share that knows at least one foreign language is calculated here as 100 minus the share that knows none.

The table

Share of adults aged 25 to 64, in %, 2022, ranked by the share knowing at least one foreign language.

Rank	Country	At least one	None	One	Two	Three or more
1	Slovenia	96.0	4.0	16.6	23.1	56.3
2	Sweden	95.9	4.1	50.8	32.3	12.7
3	Estonia	95.5	4.5	19.3	43.2	33.0
4	Lithuania	95.4	4.6	38.3	47.7	9.3
5	Latvia	95.0	5.0	26.4	52.6	16.0
6	Luxembourg	94.5	5.5	17.3	23.1	54.1
7	Netherlands	93.0	7.0	20.7	32.0	40.2
8	Finland	92.2	7.8	20.5	33.5	38.1
9	Cyprus	91.9	8.1	61.5	21.2	9.2
10	Denmark	90.2	9.8	29.2	33.0	28.1
11	Austria	88.4	11.6	53.0	24.6	10.8
12	Germany	87.7	12.3	41.4	29.8	16.6
13	Slovakia	85.6	14.4	30.3	34.2	21.1
14	Malta	79.6	20.4	47.2	24.5	7.9
15	Croatia	79.3	20.7	50.3	23.2	5.8
16	Belgium	78.0	22.0	25.1	29.5	23.5
17	Czechia	77.9	22.1	46.6	24.5	6.8
18	France	77.4	22.6	34.5	29.8	13.1
19	Poland	72.9	27.1	47.4	20.5	5.0
20	Greece	71.2	28.8	55.0	13.1	3.1
21	Portugal	69.9	30.1	31.0	25.0	14.0
22	Italy	67.9	32.1	37.5	22.8	7.6
23	Ireland	62.5	37.5	33.8	21.0	7.7
24	Spain	56.3	43.7	34.6	15.8	5.8
25	Romania	48.8	51.2	35.2	12.3	1.2
26	Hungary	48.7	51.3	30.6	14.2	3.8
27	Bulgaria	48.2	51.8	34.5	11.2	2.5
	EU	74.7	25.3	37.6	24.7	12.3

Where most adults report a foreign language

In 10 countries, at least 90% of adults said they knew a foreign language. Slovenia came first, at 96.0%, followed by Sweden (95.9%), Estonia (95.5%), Lithuania (95.4%) and Latvia (95.0%). Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland, Cyprus and Denmark complete the group.

In 18 countries, more than three in four adults reported at least one foreign language.

The number of languages also varies. In Slovenia, 56.3% said they knew three or more, and in Luxembourg 54.1%, the only two countries above half. Eurostat notes that Luxembourg's result may reflect, at least in part, its three official languages and a school system that teaches several languages. The Netherlands (40.2%) and Finland (38.1%) followed. In Sweden, by contrast, most people who know a foreign language reported only one: 50.8% knew one, and 12.7% three or more.

Where fewer adults do

In three countries, more than half of adults said they knew no foreign language: Bulgaria (51.8%), Hungary (51.3%) and Romania (51.2%). Spain (43.7%), Ireland (37.5%), Italy (32.1%) and Portugal (30.1%) had the next highest shares, all above the EU figure of 25.3%.

Knowing three or more foreign languages was rare in Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, where the share stayed below 4%.

What this can and cannot tell you

If you are thinking about moving, these figures give a rough idea of how common foreign language skills are among adults in each country. In the Baltic countries, the Nordic countries, Slovenia, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, most adults report knowing at least one. That is an indication, not a guarantee: the survey does not say which language people know, how well they speak it, or whether a landlord, a doctor or a public office will deal with you in it.

Where half of adults or more report no foreign language, as in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, the local language is likely to matter more from the start.

For a practical list of what to sort out when you arrive, see our first 90 days abroad checklist. For the jobs that countries are trying to fill from abroad, see which countries recruit abroad, and for which jobs, and for how many residents were born in another country, the foreign-born population in the EU.

Notes on the data

Breaks in series. Eurostat marks a break in series in 2022 for France, Italy and Romania, so comparisons of these countries with earlier editions need caution. In the 2016 edition, 31.8% of adults in the EU reported no foreign language.
Low reliability. The 2022 figure for Bulgaria for three or more languages has low reliability.
Rounding. Eurostat's own article adds up the three groups that know a language instead of subtracting from 100, so some of its totals differ from the table by 0.1 point.

Country profiles: Slovenia, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Hungary, Romania and Spain.