Interview: Leonard Orban

LEONARD ORBAN, EU Commissioner for Multilingualism, talks to Ian McMaster about the importance of foreign languages for EU firms.

Why is multilingualism so important for the EU?

There are many reasons. The EU already has linguistic diversity, with 23 official languages, more than 60 regional and minority languages and hundreds of other languages spoken by people originally from outside the EU. We now want to make full use of this linguistic diversity. We want to show that, rather than being a burden, it is an asset for the EU — for cultural, educational and professional reasons. Also, EU companies can gain a competitive advantage through foreign language skills. But one of the main ideas in the new report by the Business Forum on Multilingualism is that English is not enough. English is more and more necessary for international business, but less and less sufficient.

So how good are the language skills of EU citizens?

We know from the 2006 Eurobarometer survey that we are still a long way from our goal of every citizen learning at least two foreign languages on top of his or her mother tongue. Only 28 per cent of European citizens are able to speak at least two foreign languages. And nearly half of European citizens can speak only their mother tongue. So we need to provide help to the member states to develop linguistic skills in their education systems.

Leonard Orban EU Commissioner for Multilingualism

"Companies should invest more."

What role can companies play?

Companies should invest more in developing the abilities of their workers to deal with different languages. I think especially at the level of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) there is not enough awareness of the importance of languages other than English and of the importance of implementing strategies for developing their employees’ language skills. And if this awareness does exist, there is a lack of ways of putting linguistic strategies into place and of the help the EU can offer. So we have made a number of recommendations in the report on ways to help firms.