There is something almost too prosaic about statistics. Great debates will be held in Europe this week over subjects as immediate and profound as opportunity, poverty, and welfare, and yet much of the rhetoric will be without statistical foundation, and the only numeric competition will be in the stream of adverbs and adjectives deployed to make eloquent but unsustainable arguments.

Britain will doubtless suffer more ignominy over its rebate, but far more important issues will remain undiscussed. Absurd claims by several countries, in particular by France and Germany, will, meanwhile, go unchallenged to the detriment of their own citizens and of the region.

It is clear that Europe is beginning to divide along two lines, the new and the old, and the successful and the failing, and yet the old and failing are determined that the new and successful should abide by standards that have hobbled their own countries; it is vested, institutional interest taken to the extreme. There is, however, nothing high-minded about the lowest common denominator, as figures provided by Eurostat, the European Union's statistical agency, make clear. For all the fine talk about “fairness”, which of the following three countries is fairer in providing opportunities to its more mature citizens and to women: France, Germany or Britain? In 2004, the employment rate of “older workers”, those aged between 55 and 64, in France was 37.3 per cent, in Germany 39.2 per cent, and in Britain 56.2 per cent. And what of women? The female employment rate last year in France was 57.4 per cent, in Germany 59.9 per cent, and in Britain 65.6 per cent. What European directive has Britain adopted to ensure that its citizens have more opportunities in life? Flexibility in hiring (and in firing) is essential if companies and countries are to provide choices for their citizens.

And what of the working poor, those who have clearly taken up the challenge to better themselves and their families? Are they better treated in countries that are conscious of “welfare” or in Anglo-Saxon, for which read “brutal”, Britain? The tax rate on “low wage earners”, as defined by Eurostat, was 45.4 per cent last year in Germany, 32.6 in France and 26.4 per cent in Britain. Surely there must a category in which these two pillars of European society outperform Britain? Indeed there is — unemployment, which is 4.7 per cent in Britain, 10.2 per cent in France, and 11.8 per cent in Germany. At least the jobless on the Continent have the consolation of their leaders’ philosophising.

These figures have been duly noted by the new entrants to the EU, whose citizens were endlessly and unfairly caricatured in the French referendum campaign. “Are we so frightening?” a Hungarian cabinet minister asked in Germany last week. And where are the “Polish plumbers” so mocked by the French establishment? Britain's creaking, moaning pipes are calling out urgently for them.

The British Government has created a fairer society than that overseen by many of its European allies, and Tony Blair must forcefully make that argument this week as the region’s leaders contemplate a continent without a constitution that would have institutionalised the poverty of the vulnerable and provided bragging rights for a sanctimonious elite. That the sanctimony and smugness is callous and unjustified is statistically provable.