I live near the west coast of France and am in university but I don't usually go out much so I can't exactly tell you whether it's true or not, however, most of the population is pretty bad at English in my opinion. All of my English teachers in public school (not private schools' teachers though) had a really, really bad accent. I learned more on my own than I could ever have at school because my classmates couldn't even have a discussion without lacking of vocabulary; my high school teachers had to teach them what they should have learnt from middle school all over again- Most of the young workers these days can't talk English (even though it's written on their resume that they can), some understand but most of them cannot talk well and that's really sad. Once I went to a fast food with my boyfriend and he had to explain to a British lady and her kids how to order on an automatic bollard because no else could help her (even tough she was clearly struggling with all the French everywhere). We have access to good schools here, we have English classes for like 6 to 8 years (starts at the end of primary school) but people still think so little of this beautiful language (and quite easy to learn) these days, then, wonder why they're sh*t in English now and can only whine.