Foreign language proficiency among young people in Romania

Students in Romania learn more foreign languages at school than almost anywhere else in the European Union, but, paradoxically, young Romanians are among the Europeans who know the fewest foreign languages, according to Eurostat data.

According to the data analyzed, almost all students in Romania (99.9%) in primary and secondary (high school) education study at least one foreign language, and approximately 60% learn two or more foreign languages. These percentages place us among the three countries in the European Union where general education offers access to the most foreign language skills, after Luxembourg, where 81% of students learn two or more foreign languages, and Finland (65%).

However, the percentage of young people aged 18 to 24 in Romania who know at least one foreign language is 73.7%, which places us 24th out of the 27 Member States analyzed. The EU average is 87.3% of young people who know at least one foreign language. Only countries such as Ireland (67.9%), Hungary (68.8%), and Bulgaria (72.4%) have lower values than Romania, while in countries such as Slovenia, Luxembourg, Latvia, and Sweden, over 96% of young people speak at least one foreign language.

At the same time, only 28.2% of young Romanians know at least two foreign languages, well below the European average of 50.3%. More than a quarter (26.4%) of young Romanians do not know any foreign languages, placing Romania among the countries with the highest percentages in the European Union in this regard. Only Ireland (32%), Hungary (31.2%), and Bulgaria (27.6%) have higher rates.

The data also highlights a significant difference between generations: while 73.7% of young people in Romania aged 18-24 know at least one foreign language, among Romanians aged 55-64 the percentage is only 30%.

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Data source:

• Eurostat – Pupils by education level, age and number of modern foreign languages studied - absolute numbers and % of pupils by number of languages studied [educ_uoe_lang02] https://doi.org/10.2908/EDUC_UOE_LANG02
• Eurostat - Persons knowing foreign languages by number of foreign languages and sex [edat_aes_l21] https://doi.org/10.2908/EDAT_AES_L21

Data processing and text design: Mircea Kivu

Infographic: Pascalone Media SRL

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