The single market report I put forward, promoted the idea, still valid today, that Europe, - this is political not technical, if I may trespass a very delicate border - Europe needs a new compromise between, on the one hand, the more liberal countries, liberal in the sense of market orientation, like the UK, Ireland, the Scandinavians, but also the new member states like Poland and others, which have a great affection and enthusiasm for openness and competition and market, and, on the other hand, more socially-motivated, generally large continental member states like Germany, France and, to some extent, Italy.

In the past there was this compromise and European integration progressed. But today there appears to be a rejection and turbulence. Together we must show that the single market, and market integration more generally, can be developed further if we want to re-engage broad public opinion on the subject. We mustn’t create the impression that integration is against social values, is against the right of workers, against the environment. Otherwise when these values come up, particularly after the crisis, market integration will be stopped and there will be a reverse.

Why do I mention all this in the context of growth? Because having a fully-fledged single market in Europe that is a supply side measure is of course a huge source of growth.

This is why when I was given a government responsibility we brought in my government this orientation, took it to the table of the European Council and promoted the idea and its effect on growth in a letter to Presidents Van Rompuy and Barroso, co-signed by the UK government - an odd couple after all under conventional terms - and in the end by ten other heads of government. Not by Germany and France, although Italy had re-entered a full dialogue with Germany and France after a brief parenthesis.

Now, I understand that following also the impulsion of that letter, the European Commission and the Presidency of the Council are working to put on the table of the next big European Council, the one in June - not the more informal exercise with the participation of President Hollande convened for the 23rd May - proposals and concrete actions that, I hope and understand, go very much in that direction. I think it was Mr. Montezemolo and maybe others who rightly dismissed the Lisbon Strategy because it had no teeth, but why did it have no teeth? Because when the Commission proposed, in the 2004 mid-term review, that individual member states should be named and shamed if they were not making progress on structural reforms a couple of heads of governments said “No, the Commission cannot embarrass us”. So that weapon was dropped. I am promoting around the table of the European Council, a coalition of the willing - maybe of the slightly-unaware willing, because we will all be embarrassed when the Commission castigates our countries. But this is the only way to be pressed by our public opinions and for us to press our own ministers and our administrations to do the necessary homework. I also hope that following that letter the Commission will come up with concrete proposals to make the enforcement of the single market rules swifter and surer. It makes no sense to refine, and refine, and refine, every two years the apparatus for budgetary discipline and its enforcement, which is very important, but then to leave the enforcement of the economic union, of the single market very, very weak. A situation where, for example, a country that does not want to recognize the diploma of citizens of other countries in spite of the rules and drags on for four of five years before the Court of Justice ultimately orders it to do so, is inadmissible. This denotes a vision of European integration, which has been tilted only in favour of fiscal aspects.