Fewer young people in Denmark are learning German, a situation that could have repercussions for small businesses, a new study by SMVdanmark has found.
According to SMVdanmark’s findings, the proportion of Danish students graduating with German at A-level dropped to 4% in 2023, down from 9% in 2016. In higher education, the number of students enrolled in German programmes has also fallen considerably.
As SMVdanmark noted, Germany is Denmark’s largest export market, with Danish SMEs exporting DKK 43 billion worth of products and services to Germany in 2023 alone.
Key export market
“Germany continues to be the most important export market for SMEs,” commented Alexander Søndergaard, deputy director of SMVdanmark (pictured).
“Therefore, it is a worrying development for smaller companies that fewer and fewer Danish young people are choosing German in the education system. Both in youth education and at universities, we see that the number is plummeting.”
As the representative group puts it, for many businesses, strong German skills can be the ‘difference between success and stagnation’ in what is an increasingly competitive environment.
German proficiency
The analysis also found that Denmark lags behind many other European countries in terms of German language proficiency among students. In 2022, only 27% of Danish high school students had German on their curriculum, a percentage far lower than countries like Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands, which also export heavily to Germany.
“With Germany’s large economy and purchasing power, it is crucial that we continue to have access to employees with the right language skills so that companies can seize the great opportunities in the German market,” Søndergaard added.
SMVdanmark is calling for political action to reverse the trend, and prevent future challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises, with Søndergaard calling on government to make it a “political priority to investigate the reasons why young people are opting out of German”. Read more here.
