Special Eurobarometer 243: Europeans and their languages

The three core aims of the Commission’s multilingualism policy are to encourage language learning, to promote a healthy multilingual economy and to give all EU citizens access to the Union’s legislation, procedures and information in their own language.
Between 5 November and 7 December, 28 694 citizens3 in the 25 EU countries as well as in Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Turkey were asked about their experiences and perceptions of multilingualism as part of the wave 64.3 of the Eurobarometer.
In this summary, the analysis focuses on three themes as determining factors in a multilingual society:
• The long-term objective for all EU citizens to speak two languages in addition to their mother tongue4
• Lifelong language learning starting from a very early age
• The importance of education

The results by volumes are distributed as follows:

• Volume A: Countries
• Volume AA: Groups of countries
• Volume A' (AP): Trends
• Volume AA' (AAP): Trends of groups of countries
• Volume B: EU/socio-demographics
• Volume B' (BP) : Trends of EU/ socio-demographics
• Volume C: Country/socio-demographics

Researchers may also contact GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences: https://www.gesis.org/eurobarometer