The first European SME Week, taking place from 6 to 14 May 2009, is a campaign to promote entrepreneurship across Europe and to inform entrepreneurs about support available for them at European, national and local level. It allows SMEs to discover an array of information, advice, support and ideas to help them develop their activities. Wednesday's roundtable discussion, entitled 'Languages mean business for SMEs', gathered EU officials and SME representatives, including arts and crafts entrepreneurs, to discuss how small companies can "work better with languages". Referring to a Commission-backed report released by European business leaders last year, EU Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban said "the study clearly shows that small and medium-sized companies are losing business – losing money – due to the lack of linguistic and intercultural skills". The commissioner was addressing a roundtable which focused on "practical tools" to help small countries improve their work with languages. Discussions focused on possible shortcuts to better multilingual communication, reaching out to new customers abroad, and "making better strategic use of language skills". Cassandra Oliver, accounts manager at UK firm Web Translations, said "we are always telling our clients at a very early stage of negotiations and talks with them that [languages are] a 'must' if they want to be taken seriously as an international company". Companies "must use the linguistic and multicultural skills of the countries they want to target," she added. "Europe is a big market and there are a lot of opportunities," said Thomas Meier, co-owner of Tischlerei Hencke und Meier, a German furniture company. "Bringing forward languages is an important advantage for the whole image of a craft company," he added.