One out of ten Cypriot adults do not speak a foreign language, according a Eurostat survey.
Issued on the occasion of the European Day of Languages, the Eurostat survey said that figures on self-reported language skills show that in 2016, 65% of working-age adults in the EU knew at least one foreign language.
In Cyprus 10.5% said they did not speak a foreign language, 62.2% speak one, 20.3% speak two foreign languages and 7% speak three or more.
In the UK, 65.4% said they did not speak a foreign language — while 20% said they spoke one foreign language, 9.6% spoke two and 5% spoke three or more.
In some Member States, knowledge of foreign languages was particularly high.
For example, more than 90% of respondents knew at least one foreign language in these countries: Sweden (97%), Latvia, Denmark and Lithuania (all 96%), Luxembourg (95%), Finland and Malta (both 92%) and Estonia (91%).
High levels of multilingualism were present in Luxembourg, where more than half of the working-age adults reported speaking at least three foreign languages.
Knowledge of at least three foreign languages was also high in Finland (45%) and Slovenia (38%).
In contrast, there were four Member States where half or less than half of the working-age population knew a foreign language: the United Kingdom (35 %), Romania (36 %), Hungary (42 %) and Bulgaria (50 %).
