With regard to the Brexit vote, some people are questioning the usefulness of the English language in the EU. Each member state of the EU has the right to indicate its official language to the European institutions, and when the European Community was founded in 1957 there were four languages: French, German, Dutch and Italian. The development of the EU has brought 24 languages, and two out of three anglophone member states had not recognized the English language when they joined the UE: Ireland and Malta chose respectively Gaelic and Maltese.
From 1957 to the mid-1990s French was considered the first language of the EU. And on 1st January, 1995, when Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU, the perspective changed: the new three members states chose the Shakespeare idiom as their second language. Consequently, since the 1990s most transactions have been dealt in English, French and German.
On the one hand, English will not exist anymore in terms of official language of the EU, considering that in less than two years United Kingdom will not be a member of the EU. On the other hand, according to a survey most European thinks that English is still the most useful language.
