The economic impact of the French language

Thanks to the French language, 77 member and observer States and governments of the International Organization of La Francophonie of all continents, with levels of development at the two extremes of the wealth scale, can maintain a regular dialogue. These states where French is an official language, often alongside other languages have a significant impact on the global economy, particularly in cultural sectors. Several studies revealed that speaking French is a professional asset and that, the mastery of many languages, including one for international communication such as French, is a decisive asset in the international competition and the globalized economies. In the same time the intensity of trade in goods and capital between the countries which share the French language as an official language allow the hypothesis of a "linguistic preference" as one of the components favorable to the economic relations between the territories. The scope of this paper is to investigate the current place of the French language in the field of business or finance, its economic weight in the cultural sector and the current need to master French to be competitive on the global labor market. The results have the mission to show the growing importance of the francophone economic space and the necessity of a bigger Romanian implication within its projects and initiatives. The contribution brought by the paper to the field of Francophone studies is significant especially for the Romanian academic environment since less attention has been given in the last decade to the French language and its inputs for the economy.