Italian is a major European language.
It is one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is also one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
It is also the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Italian is the second most widely spoken native language in the European Union. It has about 67 million speakers which are roughly 15% of the population of the European Union.
It is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens, which is approximately 3% of the population of the European Union. The total number of Italian speakers is approximately 85 million with Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania, and the United Kingdom) and on other continents combined.


