Jan Fidrmuc (Brunel University and CEPR)  Victor Ginsburgh () (ECORE (CORE and ECARES))  Shlomo Weber () (Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA, CORE, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and CEPR)
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Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union (EU). However, a large number of languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. On the other hand, the reduction of the number of languages would disenfranchise some or many EU citizens. We use the results of a survey on languages and argue that even though a linguistic reform reducing the number of languages is unlikely to gain sufficient political support today, this may change in the future since young people are more proficient at speaking foreign languages.
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Paper provided by International School of Economics at TSU, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia in its series Working Papers with number
005-08.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General O52 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology
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