Study says English useful in business to a point

By Ingrid Melander

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - English may be the global language of business but it is not enough by itself for smaller companies to gain a lasting presence in many markets, the European Commission says in a study due out on Friday.

Just over 10 percent of 2,000 small and medium sized firms in 29 European countries sampled in the study have lost export contracts because of lack of language skills.

"The picture is far more complex than the much-quoted view that English is the world language," the study says.

"Individual respondents mentioned that English might be used for initial market entry," the study, seen by Reuters, says.

"But longer-term business partnerships depended upon relationship building and relationship-management and, to achieve this, cultural and linguistic knowledge of the target country were essential."

The study, compiled by the British National Centre for Languages CILT for the EU executive, says French is used to trade with partners in Africa, Spanish in Latin America, and Russian in eastern Europe.

Some 51 percent of the small and medium size firms questioned for the survey said they had used English for their exports, 13 percent German, 9 percent French, 8 percent Russian, 4 percent Spanish, and 15 percent other languages.

The study marks the debut of the first EU Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban, a Romanian.