EU will probably never give English any kind of official status of "linqua franca", because Germany/France/Spain/Italy etc. big countries with long cultural his

EU will probably never give English any kind of official status of "linqua franca", because Germany/France/Spain/Italy etc. big countries with long cultural history just won't accept it. Smaller nations are much more flexible because they always have had to. That being said, English is already unofficial common language between most Europeans. E.g. it's very common for Finns and Swedes to communicate in English, despite Swedish being one the official(!) languages in Finland (also taught in elementary school), simply because many Finns have much stronger English than Swedish skills (and Swedes speak typically more neutral (clear) English than native speakers). Actually, because English is native language only in UK, that makes it excellent lingua franca for the rest: when both parties speak it as 2nd langauge, the communication is more easily kept in the same level (i.e. not speaking too fast, using exotic words, etc). That's just how the world works nowadays, e.g. in tech English vocabulary is extremely pervasive. Even in Finnish every-day talk in tech related areas we often use direct loan words from English ("Finglish"). Personally I think the only downside of English is its irregular prononcing, i.e. relatively weak correlation between written and spoken language.