Europe goes to the polls next week as the continent fights the world’s first global financial recession. Across Britain and Europe, it is our task to persuade people that the millions of new jobs our countries need will depend on higher levels of co-operation between all members of the European Union.
For me, the EU is not just a formal alliance: it is a daily commitment to work together on a range of economic, environmental and security issues. We know that without the action we are taking in the UK, 500,000 British jobs would go. But we also know that we cannot do it alone, because 60 per cent of all of our exports go to Europe. Some 700,000 companies trade with Europe and more than 3m jobs depend upon it.
So we face a choice: to embrace our membership of the EU knowing that committed partnership is the only way to achieve our common aims and protect British jobs, or to accept the Conservative opposition’s approach to British membership, which would threaten many British jobs.
Instead, the next stage in the recovery from global recession must be a strengthened European growth strategy. The economic decline of our biggest export market is becoming today’s greatest anti-recession challenge. In its last forecast, the European Commission predicted a 4 per cent decline in output across the EU, with unemployment potentially rising by as much as 9.5m between 2008 and 2010.
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