Although the significance of foreign languages is eagerly publicized within the European Union (EU), the implementation of supranational educational policies is frequently incompatible with the national "context of situation" (Kachru, 1992). A case in point is the German education system, in which the necessary reforms are caught between requirements on the European level and the structural ills of the national system, while still struggling to integrate the global and local implications of English use. The line of argument pursued highlights the importance of the discourse of the didacticization of English in the attempt to standardize European educational policies. The first part of the paper analyzes the most salient positions held in the ongoing discussions, ranging from the promotion of multilingualism to the endorsement of English as a lingua franca (House, 2003). Second, the proposals of didacticization made on the basis of linguistic theorizing are reviewed. The third part explores the specificity of the German education system, focusing on the extent to which the reforms have conceptually incorporated the notion of world Englishes. The analysis illustrates the incongruity of the German context of situation, suggesting that secondary education, in particular, is increasingly pressured by the reforms already under way in the primary and tertiary sectors.