It doesn't matter who's the best and who's the worst, we need to get everyone in Europe up to the same standard as 'the best' in order to prevent the sort of accident that happened to the Streamline shed 2-3 years ago at CDG where someone actually died because of the language problem.
I understand that it was tentatively agreed that English would be spoken at CDG because of this accident and AF agreed but the French regionals put their feet down and insisted on retaining the right to speak French. Nice to know that a life wasn't lost in vain!
The standard of ATC across Europe is, in my opinion, improving. There are definate black spots like Greece and some areas of the Iberian Peninsula, been into Madrid on 18R lately? However, things are improving. I operate out of LGW where I think the single runway operation and the slickness and the professionalism of the team on the ground is incredible. I'm sure there are numerous examples of this all over Europe, I hope so anyway. It seems that until we take the politics out of air safety and by that I mean National interest as well we will never end up with a truly common standard across Europe, maybe a common Eurocontrol agency and centralised control is the only way it could be achieved.