On the occasion of the day, a range of events are organised across Europe,[2][3] including those for children, television and radio programmes, language classes and conferences.

The events are not organised by the Council of Europe or the European Union nor do they allocate special funding (i.e. apart from their existing language programmes) for the day.

Since the end of the 18th century, the most widespread language of Europe (both in terms of geography and the number of native speakers) has been Russian, which replaced French.

Counting only native speakers, approximately 150 million Europeans speak Russian on a daily basis, followed by German (approx.

For example: in Moscow and Saint Petersburg many recent immigrants speak Ukrainian, Romanian, Armenian, Tatar, Azeri, Tajik, Chinese or one of many other languages; in London some 300 languages are spoken[citation needed] (English, French, Chinese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Bengali, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Berber, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi etc.).

At the 2002 EU summit in Barcelona, it set a target for children to learn at least two foreign languages from an early age.