Ministers wary of Delors plan

European society is being undermined by the scourge of unemployment, for which there is no miracle cure, the EU President, Jacques Delors, said yesterday, writes Sarah Lambert from Brussels. But finance ministers meeting in Brussels immediately complained that the medicine he was preparing was too bitter for treasuries to swallow.

Their reluctance to embrace the Commission's more radical proposals for job creation risks diluting the impact of the first attempt at a united European answer to the plight of 20 million unemployed. Mr Delors was vigorous yesterday in defence of his approach, but member states suggested privately that the ideological thrust of the ideas that will be presented to heads of government at a summit in three weeks' time was bound to be blunted.