The EU summit - Twin-track approach is essential

Today’s informal EU summit will mark another small step along what may be a far longer road than any of us anticipate even after four years of businesses closing, job losses, pay and service cuts and almost unprecedented wealth destruction.

However, the good news is that the EU consensus towards twin programmes to help build a better future while confronting the unsustainable debt and spending habits of today is gathering momentum. At last the medicine is sweetened by the prospect of something other than a relentless fall in living standards and catastrophic unemployment rates. French President François Hollande’s determination — and big stick — to add growth elements to the fiscal treaty has given an impetus to these measures and made space for them on what was a one-track agenda.

The latest in a long series of inconclusive summits — no decisions will be taken until next month — today’s Brussels meeting will concentrate on jobs and growth to a degree that might counter the German-led, one-eyed belief in austerity as the only way of stabilising European economies and the euro.