Europe’s ‘social model’ failing workers, says Brown

BRITISH Finance Minister Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown urged European lawmakers to spur economic growth by scrapping restrictive labour laws and cutting farm subsidies, saying Europe’s ‘social model’ was failing the workers it tries to protect.

The EU needs to create 22 million jobs by 2010 and to embrace policies to help it cope with growing competition from India and China, Brown said in a speech to the European Parliament in Brussels.

“The best of us pro-Europeans should show how the challenges of globalisation can be met in the next five years,” Brown said. “The strength of social policy is what marks Europe out as a continent. But we cannot say the model is successful when more than 20 million people are unemployed.”