I don't think English will stop being EU's lingua franca any time soon. Agreeing on a replacement would be politically impossible (the Germans wouldn't accept French, the French wouldn't accept German, the Spanish would have good arguments to make in any of both cases); and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical (you cannot realistically expect every EU citizen to know their native language, French and German, for example).
A "neutral" language like Esperanto is a nice idea, and I would also like Latin as the EU language, as it can be argued to be the language that historically shaped Europe the most. But let's not fool ourselves, no one is going to stand for learning a new language from scratch (even if it's easy) when English pretty much Just Works(tm), and provides a lot of utility also outside the EU.
Personally, I'm from Spain and I'm not annoyed or upset about English being the lingua franca. I think we should abandon the idea of English "belonging" to its native speakers. When I talk to people from Germany, from China, or from Vietnam, for example our common language is almost always English, even if neither of us are natives. English is useful for us and belongs to us, as much as to someone from
Gloucestershire.
A "neutral" language like Esperanto is a nice idea, and I would also like Latin as the EU language, as it can be argued to be the language that historically shaped Europe the most. But let's not fool ourselves, no one is going to stand for learning a new language from scratch (even if it's easy) when English pretty much Just Works(tm), and provides a lot of utility also outside the EU.
Personally, I'm from Spain and I'm not annoyed or upset about English being the lingua franca. I think we should abandon the idea of English "belonging" to its native speakers. When I talk to people from Germany, from China, or from Vietnam, for example our common language is almost always English, even if neither of us are natives. English is useful for us and belongs to us, as much as to someone from Gloucestershire.