The influence of the English language in the European Union continues to grow following the entry in 2004 of 10 countries from central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.
Thirteen per cent of the EU's population live in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and have English as their first language, while more than a third of all EU adults say that they are able to speak English along with their own language.
The increasing dominance of English, long-feared by Francophones, is shown in the latest Eurobarometer poll conducted by TNS Opinion and Social for the European Commission.
Thirty per cent of EU citizens speak German either as their mother tongue, or as a foreign language, though, reflecting the enlargement of the Union to the east, the number speaking it as a foreign language has grown by 4 per cent.
EU citizens, according to Eurobarometer, are becoming more multi-lingual. The number claiming to be able to take part in a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue has risen by 3 per cent to 50 per cent. "The accession of the 10 new member-states has increased the diversity of the language map within the EU, with Russian and Polish now appearing in the list of most commonly used languages in the EU," said TNS.
Ian McShane, the managing director of TNS/mrbi, which carries out polling on behalf of Eurobarometer in the State, said the numbers now claiming to speak two languages are "particularly interesting".
"With the availability of the Anglophone media increasing - in part because of greater access to satellite TV and the internet - and with more people travelling abroad, a growing proportion of EU citizens are gaining first-hand experience of the benefits of understanding and using English and it is likely that this proportion will continue to grow over the coming years," said Mr McShane, whose company carries out political polling for The Irish Times.
Reflecting again the enlargement to the east, Russian, tied with Spanish, is the EU's fifth most commonly spoken second language, according to the European Commission survey.
