Living in Italy, in Milan, I can try to outline the situation in Italy Even admitting that the study is true, which I don't believe, there are factors at play

Living in Italy, in Milan, I can try to outline the situation in Italy Even admitting that the study is true, which I don't believe, there are factors at play - most Italian English speakers have been moving to foreign countries for the past 20 years (between 100 thousands and 250 thousands a year) - Italy, after Japan, is the oldest country in the World, many Italians have never met an English speaking person and the last one for many of them was soon after WW2 - English has never been important in Italy, unless you had to communicate with anglophones. German, French and Spanish are much more widespread either because they were studied at school, are easier for us to learn and we have the majority of exchanges with those countries (France is the main commercial partner, Germany is the second largest buyer of Italian products, including tourism) - immigration brought here a lot of people coming from non-english backgrounds, in Milan the second most spoken language is now (probably) Chinese. It's easier to meet a Japanese on the streets than an American and a lot of workers in base services (transport, delivery, cleaning etc.) come from south america, northern Africa or East Europe Speaking a very good English is almost irrelevant, the majority of the people an Italian needs to speak to speak a worse English than them, assuming they even speak English at all it's not uncommon to meet a Tunisian transporter speaking with a Bosnian mason in a Chinese bar and they use Italian - their own version of it - as lingua franca It's fascinating Edit: forgot to mention that many Italians in the past migrated to Germany or Belgium, that's why they speak German or French, but not English.