Each year, thousands of European companies lose business and miss out on contracts as a result of their lack of language skills, according to a study carried out for the European Commission during 2006 by CILT, the UK National Centre for Languages, published today. The findings suggest that there is enormous potential for small businesses in Europe to increase their total exports if they invest more in languages and develop coherent language strategies. Recent research shows that companies that enhance their language skills can exploit better the business opportunities in the EU’s internal market, which, with nearly half a billion people, is the world’s largest.

“Far from being an unwelcome cost to doing business", European Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban, said, "investing in language skills can dramatically improve a company’s business opportunities. I plan to place multilingualism at the heart of the Lisbon strategy for more growth and jobs.”

for more you can visit: http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/key/studies_en.html

oh well, people from bilingual countries have a greater advantage, esp. if those two languages are from different language families/groups, for instance, one of my mother tongues is a slavic and another is turkic. i find it easier to learn more similar languages, except chinese, which i'm trying to learn now

What AllTooHuman is getting as is as individuals they are monolingual, in general, not as a nation.. The UK has many different languages spoken too, but normally only one language per person!! I know French, Spanish and Italian as well as Egnlish but I would never claim that I can speak them, until I am fluent and can be clearly understood in those countries.