Language, and languages, are the means of conveying information, not the least of which is economic information. The creation of a European common market requires that all partners who participate in its economic activities be able to understand and use information that is available in languages other than their own, and that, conversely, they be able to communicate information to other members who do not speak their language. The question is one of transfer of information among languages; in other words, translation.

More precisely, the negative economic impact of multilingualism is twice as severe for European economic agents:

as producers of goods and services, they are up against additional obstacles when they want to export their products. The effect of these obstacles is loss of time and money, which, by extension, renders the agents less competitive;

as consumers of goods and services, it is extremely difficult for them to keep informed about the most recent technical developments and to obtain state-of-the-art equipment, which in turn holds them back technologically and, once again, renders them less competitive.

On the other hand, the mere fact of being the only important economic and industrial bloc in the world to face the necessity of having to solve such problems could give the European community a considerable economic advantage: it now has the opportunity to acquire valuable know-how in the area of language manipulation. This unique skill can then be exploited economically (directly, by selling its experience and its solutions; indirectly, by overcoming other linguistic barriers to its relations with external economic partners: USSR, China, the Arab nations, Latin America, etc.), on the social front (by applying this knowledge to the integration of the physically challenged, etc.), and even in activities that are intrinsically more monolingual than multilingual.

The development of a solid and profitable language industry would assure the European community of long term world supremacy.