Languages form the vehicle of information, notably of economic information. The creation of a european common market demands that all partners participating in the economic activities have access to the information provided for them in languages other than theirs and that inversly, they can communicate the information they want to get across to people who do not speak their language. It is the problem of transfer of information between languages, in other words, of translation.

More precisely, the negative economic impact of multilinguism is doubled for the european economic agents:

By being producers of goods and services, they face additional obstacles when they want to export, which is translated into a waste of time and of money and, consequently, into less competitiveness;

By being consumers of goods and services, they face increasing difficulties in finding out about the most recent technical developments and in acquiring the most modern equipments, which has as a consequence a technological backgroundness and then, once more, a loss of competitiveness.

On the other hand, the fact that it is the only important economic and industrial body in the world which has to find a solution to such problems, can give to Europe a considerable economic advantage: it has here the unique opportunity to acquire a previous know-how in the domain of language processing, that it can exploit economically (directly by selling its experience and realizations; indirectly by surmounting other linguistic barriers more easily in its relations with external economic partners: USSR, China, Arab World, Latin America, etc.) and socially (by applying its experience to the integration of handicaps, etc.), within the scope of monolingual and multilingual activities equally.

The development of sane and beneficial language industries would assure in the long term a worldwide supremacy to Europe.