Go multilingual or lose out, commissioner tells EU businesses

According to the study Effects on the European Economy of Shortages of Foreign Language Skills in Enterprise published on Friday by the UK National Centre for Languages, thousands of European companies lose business and miss out on contracts as a result of their lack of language skills.

In presenting the findings, Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban, whose post was created in January when his country Romania joined the EU, said that he intended "to set all the [23] official languages spoken in the European Union on an equal footing". He added that he would also push the 27-nation bloc to promote the use of subtitles rather than dubbing of television programs or films, as a way to promote multilingualism.

Orban further noted that, according to the survey, around 11% of respondents had lost a contract as a result of lack of language skills, and that the average loss per business over a three-year period was more than €325,000.

The research is the first effort at EU level to estimate the costs to businesses incurred by a lack of foreign-language skills. The data in the study is based on a sample of 2,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Europe, correlated with information from 30 multinational companies and a group of experts from the countries involved, and supplemented by a set of case studies.

The portfolio of multilingualism was created in the Commission to accommodate the accession of Bulgaria and Romania on 1 January 2007. Multilingualism, together with consumer protection, enabled each member state to have one commissioner.