the problem is that there are countries where German is learned by 0%. While there are always people around Europe learning French. Here in the Iberian Peninsula, French is learned by 10% (in Portugal almost 20%, English is a little more than French) while German is only in Portugal by 3%, 0%-0.5% (or less) in Spain, they prefer Italian. BTW I don't why why this fuss around this... In Portugal, English/French has the same level. While German is side by side with Latin, only teached to people of some areas between 16 and 18 yrs old.  I never had the option to learn German, if i would had I would probably learned it, dispite not being among the most beautiful of the languages.-