Languages form the vehicle for information, in particular for economic information. The creation of a single European market makes it necessary for all those participating in economic activities to have access to information sent to them in other languages than their own, and likewise to be able to send information to persons who do not speak the same language they do. The problem here is that of information transfer between languages, otherwise known as translation.

More precisely, the negative economic impact of language differences for European commercial entities is of two kinds:

As producers of goods and services, they run into extra obstacles when they wish to export, which shows up as losses in time and money and, consequently, lowered competitiveness;

As consumers of goods and services, they find difficulties in keeping up with the latest technical developments and acquiring the most recent equipment, which leads to a technological lag and, again, to lowered competitiveness.

On the other hand, Europe's being the only large economic and industrial bloc in the world that has such problems to solve can give it considerable economic advantages: it has a chance to acquire valuable know-how in the area of language handling which it will then be able to take advantage of economically (directly by selling its experience and solutions, indirectly by being able to surmount language barriers more easily in its relationships with outside economic partners such as the USSR, China, the Arab world, Latin America, etc.) and socially (by applying its knowledge gained in including the handicapped in society, etc.), both in monolingual activities and in cross-language ones.

Developing healthy and profitable language industries would assure Europe a longer-lasting supremacy in the world.