Its not, at least not in my country. Its mandatory for specifics career paths but you can have a good job without speaking it. And i can't remember when i actually spoke english in my work.

I met a lot of people who don't really speak it well or understand english and they had like 9 years english classes in school.

It really depends if you actually use the language. For example i played a lot of MTG with english cards or talked to foreigners during my games when i grew up. This was good practice. It depends if you use it or not.

And the english education in Europe is so different. It depends where you live. Scandinavians or people from netherlands are usually pretty good with english. Scandinavians have probably the best english education in europe outside of britain.