Some 82.7% of primary school students in Romania were studying English in 2015, making it the most studied foreign language in the country, according to data from the EU statistical office Eurostat, quoted by Agerpres.

French came in second, with 15.2% of students learning it.

English was a top foreign language for study across the EU in primary school. Some 17.5 million students (83.5%) were studying it. It is followed by French, with 0.8 million students (4.8%); German, with 0.7 million students (3.9%); Spanish, with 0.1 million students (0.6%); Russian, with 54,000 students (0.3%); and Italian, with 33,000 students (0.2%).

Almost 19 million primary school students in the European Union, or 84% of the students at this school level, were learning a foreign language in 2015, Eurostat data shows. One million of them, or 5%, was learning two languages or more.

Less than half of the student population was learning a foreign language in 2015 in Portugal (35.4%), Belgium (36.7%), The Netherlands (42.9%) and Slovenia (49.8%). At the same time, all the primary school students in Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta and Austria (100%) and almost all in Croatia (99.9%), Spain (99.4%), France (99.2%), Italy (98.6%), Romania (98.3%) and Poland (97.6%) were studying a foreign language in 2015, according to Eurostat data.

At an EU level, some 84.3% of primary school students were studying a foreign language in 2015.

The European Day of Languages is celebrated on September 26.

Bucharest school hosts Romanian classes for refugees

editor@romania-insider.com