With expansion of European Union, Russian language became the 4-th commonly used foreign language in EU.
According to report published by European Commission this week, 6% of EU citizens know Russian language - that is almost 30 million people.
Russian language is a native one for hundred thousands of citizens from Eastern European and Baltic countries, which joined EU in May 2004. Dozen millions of people speak and understand Russian language well.
Among foreign languages in EU the most widespread are English, German and French. Russian is ahead of such European languages as Spanish and Italian.
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