HAMPTON COURT, Oct 27: EU leaders sought on Thursday to thrash out a strategy to drag Europe out of its economic malaise and avoid being overtaken by rising Asian giants China and India.

The leaders, meeting amid the Tudor opulence of Hampton Court Palace outside London, are under pressure to deliver more than talk, with economists saying that action is long overdue.

British finance minister Gordon Brown urged leaders to seize the chance at the summit to push ahead with long-stalled reforms aimed at injecting dynamism into Europe’s lethargic economies.

The Hampton Court meeting is the chance for Europe to show leadership and kick-start the European economy back onto a path of reform, modernisation and growth, Brown said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Europe.

While the United States and Japan are enjoying an economic resurgence, much of Europe is still struggling to stimulate growth, with latest figures putting GDP expansion in the eurozone at a paltry 1.2 per cent.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has made reform the battle cry of Britain’s six-month EU presidency, warning the that Europe faces “grand strategic failure” if it shies away from the challenge.

The Hampton Court summit gives Blair a fresh chance to renew his call to arms, although bragging about Britain’s superior growth and flexibility could reignite latent tensions with countries like France and Germany, more reluctant to pursue sweeping reforms.

Giving a preview of his thinking, Blair said Wednesday: “I think that it is agreed generally in Europe that we need to get Europe moving and we need to get it moving in the right direction.

The question is how we do that, he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Much of the debate — which was taking place behind closed doors in order to preserve the informal nature of the brain-storming session — is to be focused on which economic model can ensure European prosperity without jeopardising citizens security amid growing competition from Asian countries.

Weighing into the debate, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned that the European social model needed an update if it was to survive in the fiercely competitive world of globalisation.

He told German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung that if you want to keep a social market economy you have to undertake reform.

Although EU leaders widely agree that the right model for Europe is a “social market economy”, interpretations of what that means vary widely.—AFP