I hear the English can speak English quite well

Yes, but then there is the "sun" part...

Us Irish also have some ability.

As an Englishman perhaps not as well as you would think.

Yes, when I watch some British TV shows I hear a lot of pronunciations I was taught was wrong in school.

But it's not the same old english that mama used to speak...

We Swedes too, for that matter.

I had the strangest problem with Swedes where they'd seem to speak perfect English, but repeatedly mishear me as saying something offensive and never stop to make sure.

Actually I think I mentioned "cutting myself shaving" to someone and they apparently to this day believe I'm suicidal.

Haven't seen it myself, but I'm guessing it's a bit Dunning-Kruger effect + unwillingness to ask outright (the average Swede don't want to look silly, etc). While we have a significant exposure to English, few of us regularly have casual conversations with native English speakers, so our vocabularies aren't as good as we tend to think.

Lisbon fulfills both your criteria: lots of sun and even kids learn English on the first year at school. I can surely bet that we speak better english than British people will ever speak Portuguese! :)

There is another strange thing in Europe: more sun ==> less salary ;)

Most Dutch people I've met speak better English than a good percentage of Americans...

Actually, they have quite an American accent. Because they watch a lot of American shows in original language, as they explain.

This is true. Because we're such a small country, dubbing isn't viable (adding subtitles is cheaper). And I'm glad for it, because I can't stand dubbed things, but that might just be because I'm not so used to it.

English is one of the two official languages of Malta. I was thinking about this evergreen island myself, but it seems that they have mainly jobs with web dev and C#.

I am now in Germany on C++ job and I don't now German that much.

> about this evergreen island

I'd say it is somewhat ever-yellow/red-ish :)