Gordon Brown: Europe needs to meet and master globalisation

From a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the European Parliament Economic Committee, meeting in Brussels

And our resolve will not be broken. Indeed, today, as we intensify our shared campaign to identify and root out terrorist assets, all 25 finance ministers affirmed as one that, just as there can be no hiding place for terrorists, so there can never be any safe haven for those who finance terrorism.

Today we must also meet and master as great an economic change. Twenty years ago, just 10 per cent of manufactured goods came from developing countries. The challenge from China and India is now such that soon the figure will be 50 per cent. Today Asia's share of output stands ready to surpass Europe. In 10 years' time the share will be 50 per cent higher. For the last decade, Europe has not only been only growing half as much as America, but one quarter the rate of China and India.

And on top of today's unemployment of 20 million, it is now estimated that within 15 years a total of 5 million more jobs will be outsourced from Europe and the US to Asia. Europe will need to create 22 million more jobs by 2010 alone.

So, fellow parliamentarians, Europe's peoples need a social and economic policy to meet and master globalisation, a new economic and social policy born out of our shared objectives for growth and employment founded on our belief in a united Europe, already the most successful single market the world has known.

Let us be honest about the scale and intensity of change. As Europe enters the second stage of its history, as a union we are finding, and the people are telling us, that the agenda relevant to its first phase - the era of a trade bloc - is quite different from the agenda relevant to the era of globalisation.