I'm from Norway, and here it's not optional to choose not to learn a second language. I myself started learning English at school when I was nine, and continued with it until I graduated high school ten years after. Now they start when they are five-six years old. The last two years of high school you can choose not to have English classes, or at least when I went there it was like that. It's been five years since I graduated and there apparently are many more new rules now that I don't know anything about.
In junior high, we had to choose an elective subject, which most often would be a third language, like German or French, now Spanish even. And then you had to have that language at high school also, depending on what "line" you belonged to. (I call it that since I don't know which other word to use, we have different "lines" at high school; music, sports, art, economics, media, health care, chef and waitress, general theoretic subjects, and probably more...)
My English teachers have always praised me for my good English, my spoken English is better than my written English though... and I think that is because Norway is a country that don't dub TV and movies that are in other languages. We learn quickly to read subtitles, so the English languages especially, is around us all the time, and I think many Norwegians are quite skilled in the language.
My French on the other hand, sucks I guess I never really took the time to learn it properly, so since I haven't used it in over six years, it doesn't really make any sense to me anymore. And then we don't get that much French culture in our living room as we do with the English.
But I was under the impression that most countries learn English at school, so I'm not really that surprised when other countries speak English. When people in other countries speak Norwegian on the other hand, then I get really shocked.