The Council of Europe and the European Commission have strongly recommended the introduction of early start foreign language policies across Europe. How does the reality of implementation vary and why does it matter? 

The current European Union membership of some 27 countries have almost all lowered their start age policies for FL learning during the past 20 years, with some 13 countries now mandating for a start age of seven years or less, a further ten countries introducing a compulsory start age of eight or nine years and just four countries retaining a start age of ten or eleven years (Enever, 2011). Despite these radical changes, there continues to be wide variation in the detail of policy and the processes of implementation. This chapter introduces a comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the main elements of policy across the seven ELLiE country contexts.