I don't see it happening officially, but this is more and more becoming the case de-facto isn't it? Especially anytime things are done cross-border, English is the default language for a lot of situations, whether business or government or education. I was at a scientific meeting at the European Commission last year, for example, and not a single piece of written information, or spoken talk, was given in a language besides English, and as far as I can tell nobody even considered that a question. Even seems increasingly true in France, which has been politically one of the strongest opponents of de-facto English. French politicians still give their talks at the EU in French on principle, but French companies use a lot of English when doing business with other countries.

Sweden pretty well leads Europe when it comes to highest adoption of English as a second language. I've always thought that was a valuable asset for them as a nation when it comes to competing in global tech and business generally. Being able to build an Internet company in Sweden and have no language barrier (and less of a cultural understanding barrier as well) to then go and push into the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand markets ($27 trillion in economy via one primary language, twice the size of China's economy). In terms of adoption you also get the Netherlands at over 90%, the Phillipines at over 90%, Denmark at 86%, Israel at 85%. Another two trillion dollars in economy that has English in fluent-level standard use. In total you get half the global economy with English.

Smaller countries that speak languages like Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic etc just don't have the network effect so they also learn English.

Then people in the larger countries like France and Germany tend to want to converse with the most people. The UK is large, and all the smaller countries have ESL speakers, so they learn it to, and so on and so forth.

Weirdly despite a lot of global speakers I didn't meet many Spanish speakers in Europe (outside Spain).

(Though it is funny to have someone chastise you for only speaking English then blank out when you start speaking Spanish back at them.)

Easy for me to say when I'm already fluent in it, but one of the most novel, equalizing experiences of travel is being in a new place and not having the crutch of your native language.

Of course, also easy for me to say when none of the downsides of EU fragmentation affect me.

I don't know, but I'd rather prefer French or German to become the lingua franca of the EU. Why?

Because those two languages are spoken by a large amount of population (actually German is close to 100M speakers, that's close to 1/4 of the whole population. French has fewer speakers, but is probably more studied in Europe than German.

Also, those two nations, in their own unique way, are at the very core and center of the EU. Both believe in it, both want it to keep going, thriving.

Call me crazy - but I'd even prefer Esperanto being used as the official European language as compared to English. At least the EU would not be giving an "easy" advantage to American and British citizens, just by the fact of being native speakers.

It just wouldn't be fair to have European kids and adults have to learn a minority language while Americans or Brits would just get it for free.

No one gets extra credit for tying their hand behind their back (shunning the English language, in this case) in a globalized world.

> It just wouldn't be fair to have European kids and adults have to learn a minority language while Americans or Brits would just get it for free.

Life isn't fair.

Before English became lingua franca, French used to be it. Another language can become in the future. A globalized world is something I love - yet the world seems to be going in the opposite direction these days.

French & German as the core EU languages would be a great step forwards towards truly making EU independent of American & British influences.

I lived in Turkey for two years, spoke at a conversation level fairly well, but once the other person realized I wasn't Turkish (it wasn't apparent) they wanted to practice their English. I went to Ukraine in December, spent 3 months learning Russian (I was visiting a Russian speaking area), and once they learned I was American (much sooner than Turkey), they wanted to practice their English. The only two counties that let me practice were France and Italy, with the Italians being the most patient in our conversations.

As an American, we want to learn new languages but no one let us practice.

Most people in Ukraine don't even have a way to practice English with native English speakers at all.

So perhaps a bit more practice upfront would be a good idea :)

I understand others wanting to practice with a native English speaker, and them getting the chance was probably more beneficial than me speaking Russian. Though the stereotype of Americans not attempting to learn a 2nd language gives me a slight annoyance, though nothing I lose much sleep over :)

The only language I could not grasp when traveling was Nepalese. Though all Asian languages based on tones has given me trouble.

My opinions as well. That's what we're here for!

While it's "only" spoken natively by 40M+ people in the EU, it is spoken globally by more than 1B people. It's, arguably, easier to learn than French and definitely German. Very easy to learn for Italians, Portuguese and Romanians. And it's widely studied in most places. It would also be more "neutral" than picking either French or German.

(edited: minor corrections)

I agree that English would be a brilliant choice for EE but I suspect the Russian-speaking minority would be perturbed.

That might change. The presence of England, which can't choose anything but English, means Ireland can costlessly designate Irish for reasons of ethnic pride. But almost nobody in Ireland can speak it -- without a ringer to choose English, Ireland could be forced into designating that instead.

That's a pretty niche area of interest, if you're not Estonian.

No and no, you’ll get an exit from the EU before you can convince people there that the language spoke at home by only 5m EU citizens after Brexit should be an official language.