Behind a massive security shield, European leaders met in Barcelona, Spain yesterday to try to agree on how to match America's economic dynamism without losing the social safety nets still dear to many of their voters.
For the first time, 13 Central and Eastern European nations queuing up to enter the European Union also took full part in talks at a EU summit, underlining the scale of the task the bloc faces in forging agreements among governments on issues as electorally sensitive as labor law and state regulation of key industries.
Spain has put jet fighters and anti-aircraft missiles on stand-by in Barcelona to guard against September 11-style raids while some 8,500 police are on hand to ensure planned street protests by anti-globalization and other pressure groups do not create the violent chaos seen at previous international summits.
Stemming disarray within the EU, which currently has 15 members, may prove harder as the leaders try to breathe new life into an ambitious plan, agreed upon two years ago in Lisbon, to free markets as a way of outstripping US competitiveness by 2010.
Hard bargaining began early as finance ministers met late into the night over plans to channel more funding to the EU's poorer Mediterranean neighbors, ending up with a compromise short of what the Spanish hosts had been suggesting.
On the bigger issues, European governments of the left and right have their own conceptions of economic progress.
And imminent elections in France and Germany, the Union's core economies and both with strong traditions of state regulation, have made Berlin and Paris even more cautious of potentially unpopular ideas like watering down job security laws or dismantling state monopolies with unionized workforces.
French President Jacques Chirac and his Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who face off against each other in a presidential election next month, have made clear they will make only limited concessions to EU demands that France let other firms compete with its state monopoly in supplying electricity.
(Agencies March 16, 2002)
