There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?
Two views on what language to chose: The language most spoken in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_speakers_in_Europe The language most spoken worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
So it looks like it might be either German, Spanish or French, depending on how you would assess it. No surprises there. Now to convert everybody, not so easy ;-)
German would be nice.
As long as nobody is forced to learn it with a tank pointed at their house.
True