German or French, European 2nd language

According to Chrystal's source (2001),
English is spoken as a natural language by 62,3 million english-speakers(1), and 224 million (2) europeans know this language.
For German 90 (1), and 132 million (2) with the 25 states (and 118 with the 15 first european states)
For French 64,5 million (1), and 130 million (2) with the 25 states (and 127,8 with the 15 first european states)
A coefficient has been calculated for each languages, which measures the evolution degree of the speakers' population.
(3) English: 3,60
French: 2,01
German: 1,47

For the others:

Spanish
(1) 39
(2) 56
(3) 1,43

Italian
(1) 58
(2) 65
(3) 1,13

Dutch
(1) 22
(2) 24
(3) 1,11

Polish
(1) 38
(2) 40
(3) 1,06

Graddol report, English= 100:
English
100
German
43
French
33
Spanish
31
Japanese
32
Chinese
22

EU texts (1999):

English
52%
French
35%
German
5%


Ginsburgh and Wieber reports:
% of European who know:
English: 55%
French: 34%
German: 31%

German of course. In Europe it has more native speakers than English and French together.

German. But French is very nice.

Germany, as everyone knows, is the economic and cultural powerhouse of Europe. However, people might prefer to speak French before German because it is much easier for most people to learn French than German. Also, French is the second-most important European country. I think it would behoove everyone to learn BOTH!

France and German are not in Europe, they are arabic

German is easier to me than French. I would learn German .

Germany has a more potent economy. German language. Hands down.

French is more used in EU institutions.

Germany's economy is only stronger at this point because it has a bigger population. But of course by mid-century, France will have the largest population in the EU.

That is false. EU organisms use German and French equally. Perhaps English is a bit more used.

EU organisms? lol... Sounds like you're including cats and dogs in that statement...

English is more used, then comes French, then comes German, in that order.

EU don't work that way. French and German are equally used, this is a basic european rule: Germany and France have the same weight in all aspects. I don't think this is fair because Germany is more important but this is how EU was designed.

Actually, all 27 of the EU languages are official working languages. However, any institution can use whatever languages it chooses in its daily activities. Correspendingly, most choose English, then French, then German. Also, it is said that in closed doors meetings, English and French are the top two most used languages, and German is a distant third.

No you are wrong. Appart from official languages there are three daily work languages which are English, French and German. If French was more used than German, Germany would get very angry and everything could happen.

I think you're wrong. I used to believe that there were three working languages, but recently I've read some information that says differently. For instance, in the European Court of Justice, French is used exclusively. And as a matter of fact, when the first EEC treaty was signed in Rome in 1957, it was written in French only, even though it was signed by countries speaking four languages (French, Italian, German, and Dutch).

All EU institutions practice multilinguism and many languages are used, of course English , French and German at least.