Blair returns from summit to worsening foot-and-mouth crisis

Tony Blair was today flying back to Britain from the Swedish EU summit to mastermind the action plan to combat the worsening foot-and-mouth crisis.

The Prime Minister’s visit to Stockholm for a meeting on major EU economic reforms turned into a mission to ‘‘sell’’ Britain as being open for business and not a country in quarantine.

With three other member states now affected by the disease, Mr Blair was not alone in pushing foot-and-mouth disease to the top of the summit agenda.

And he gratefully seized on offers from France and Finland to send veterinary experts to the UK to help the Government keep a grip on the massive practical problems of carrying out a widespread slaughter-and-burn strategy.

Before leaving Stockholm today, Mr Blair was putting his name to upbeat conclusions about the EU’s goal of becoming the world’s most dynamic economy by 2010.

An accord on freeing up the European market in financial services will be trumpeted as a demonstration of the kind of EU co-operation that can boost trade and industry.

Chancellor Gordon Brown says the move, which will bring big benefits to UK business, is a key part of an EU reform agenda designed to put Europe ahead by boosting entepreneurship, cutting business red tape, liberalising EU energy and telecoms markets and developing the bio-technology and information technology sectors.

Mr Blair said he wanted to see a Community-wide patent by the end of this year, increased labour mobility, simplified business rules, more female entrepreneurship, improved EU-wide innovation and research, and, by 2003, a ‘‘single European sky’’ breaking up national demarcations in the sky for civilian aircraft, to improve safety and efficiency and cut costs.

The economic reform strategy was launched a year ago to keep Europe ahead in the highly competitive world of commerce and enterprise.

The Stockholm summit was intended as another milestone on the way to a genuinely single European market for finance and business.

But Mr Blair signalled that his commitment to Europe-driven advances has its limits: asked if he would support forthcoming EU proposals to extend worker consultation and information to small firms with fewer than 50 employees, he said there were some areas best left to national decision-making.

And efforts to establish the ‘‘single European sky’’ are currently hampered by an Anglo-Spanish dispute over the status of Gibraltar airport.

That, said Mr Blair, was an issue which he would be discussing with his Spanish counterpart on another occasion.

Now his only focus is the foot-and-mouth crisis and its impact on the possibility of an early General Election.

The summit, meanwhile, clearly signalled that the drive for a genuinely border-free Europe for goods, services and workers goes on.

Unfortunately, the EU leaders acknowledged, foot-and-mouth disease recognises no national borders either.