What percentage of people born abroad is proficient in their host country’s language?
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On this map, we’re going to have a look at the host country’s language skills of the foreign-born population.
Not too surprisingly, the percentage of the foreign-born population that is proficient in the host country’s language is highest in countries with relatively low immigration. In Ireland it’s also fairly high, mainly due to English being the official language of Ireland.
The lowest percentage can be found in Malta (15.2%). This is because Maltese is considered the host country’s language here. English is widely spoken in Malta, so most migrants likely don’t bother improving their Maltese. Malta is followed by Estonia (17.6%) and Latvia (31.6%). Both have a large Russian population, which could explain the low percentage.
Other countries where the majority of the the foreign-born population is not proficient in the host country’s language are Cyprus (44.4%), Denmark (49.9%), Finland (44.8%) and the Netherlands (46.5%).
To show a more clearer picture, I’ve also made a map showing the % of foreign-born population that has at least intermediate (B1) language skills of the host-countries language. Although B1 still creates barriers in terms of language when participating in society and the job market, it’s a step in the right direction and opens many doors for the foreign-born population. Being proficient (C1) in the host country’s language would create far fewer barriers for the migrant to participate in society and the job market and would therefore be a more suitable indicator.
There are 5 countries where a large portion of the respondents did not state their language skills: Slovenia (14.5%), Denmark (18.4%), Romania (28.3%), Estonia (32.3%) and Germany (35.3%). This could affect the final percentages, especially in the case of Romania, Estonia and Germany.
The language skills of the respondents were determined based on the self-assessment grid of the CEFR and only the skills for spoken interactions.
For multilingual countries “main host country language” should be interpreted as “the official language of the region where the respondent lives”.
Data for this map comes from Eurostat.
Landgeist 
This data is not necessarily pointing to a problem or telling the correct story: Most Foreign born people in the Netherlands speak english, and dutch people speak English fluently, and reply in the english language automatically when addressed by foreigners. Same goes for most Scandinavian countries. France scores high because most of the immigration comes from countries that already speak french
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