This special edition of the Eurobarometer examines the complex linguistic patterns of countries making up the EU. Recognising the EU as a multilingual space, a new multilingual policy was adopted in November 2005 encouraging language learning, a healthy multilingual economy and access to Community information in the languages of its citizens. Data is provided on the share of native languages spoken within a geographical area and on the share of second or third languages spoken by EU citizens. The results show that language skills are unevenly distributed both over the geographical area of Europe and over socio-demographic groups.

See also other publications and surveys conducted by Eurobarometer.