Greek secondary students are at the bottom of the list when it comes to studying two or more foreign languages according to data published by Eurostat.
Only 1% of Greek students in upper secondary general education studied two or more foreign languages in 2019 with low rates recorded also in Portugal (6%), Ireland (12%), Italy (25%) and Spain (27%).
Meanwhile, across the EU, all students in upper secondary general education studied two or more foreign languages in Luxembourg and France.
Estonia, Romania, Czechia and Finland also had a large proportion of students studying two or more languages (all 99%), followed closely by Slovakia (98%), Croatia (95%) and Slovenia (92%).
In 2019, 59% of EU pupils in upper secondary general education (ISCED level 34) studied two or more foreign languages in the EU.
Most studied language within the EU
In 2019, English was the most commonly studied foreign language at upper secondary general education level in the EU, with 96% of students learning it. Spanish ranked second (26%), followed by French (22%), German (20%) and Italian (3%).
In addition, Russian was the non-EU language most commonly learned in the EU (3%), especially in Estonia (68%) and Latvia (57%), followed by Lithuania (30%) and Bulgaria (24%).
