Today’s “informal” European Union summit at Hampton Court stands little risk of violating the EU Working Time Directive. The event, cut down to a single day, will not start until 10am and Tony Blair’s letter of invitation expresses the hope that “we can finish by about 6pm”. All 25 leaders have been asked to avoid “lengthy initial comments” and tear up their “prewritten speeches” — not that this is likely to stop Gerhard Schröder delivering a lengthy farewell lecture designed to make life even more difficult for his absent successor, Angela Merkel.

The ambitious stated goal of this fireside format is to allow “a truly political and strategic discussion about how we can work together . . . to take the opportunities and tackle the challenges facing us”. It is refreshing to see an EU summit devoted to policies rather than institutional knitting, but Mr Blair should have given his colleagues more time. In a mere eight hours it is hard to see how discussion can progress beyond cliché-ridden homologues about “ social Europe” and its supposed opposite, the lightly regulated, flexible economy. As host, Mr Blair may find himself openly accused of structuring the day to avoid the vexed topic of the EU’s budget for 2007-2113 — and his colleagues’ demand for the surrender of the British rebate.

That would be unfortunate, and unfair too, because the question he is asking is the one that concerns Europeans. Can Europe compete globally, particularly against China and India, and if so, what will it have to give? Will it mean a “race to the bottom” that depresses living standards, or can Europe hold its own in open markets by virtue of superior skills, inventiveness, flexibility and productivity?

The Franco-German obsession with “social Europe” offers no solutions to 23 million Europeans and their families who are humiliatingly marginalised by unemployment. With 93 million classed as “economically inactive” and the research and development gap between the EU and the US and Asia continuing to widen, it is imperative to stimulate competitiveness and growth.

A few basic facts need to be acknowledged. The first is that the EU is not in crisis. The collapse of the mistimed, overblown constitutional project is a plus, not a minus, and enlargement is already doing more to shake the EU out of its lethargy than the Lisbon agenda could have hoped to achieve. Listen to some of the dynamic new members’ experiences, the Prime Minister should say, and learn from them.

Mr Blair cannot publicly admit a further truth, which is that the EU budget can wait a few more months, but that a winnable EU strategy for the Doha round of trade talks is now urgent. On the budget, his colleagues know that the British rebate is negotiable only in the context of revamped EU spending priorities, and that the Commission proposal to review the new budget in 2009, with changes to take effect in the following, post-2013, budget cycle, falls well short of a clear guarantee of reform. But at the World Trade Organisation, the EU’s refusal to offer acceptable cuts in its farm tariffs has brought talks to breaking point. The EU is on notice, from the US and the developing world, to come up with a radically improved offer within ten days. If France blocks further progress, the WTO’s director-general Pascal Lamy may call off the December 12 ministerial meeting in Hong Kong.

If this mammoth negotiation were to collapse, they may not resume before President Bush’s “fast track” negotiating authority expires. The risk to the multilateral trading regime would then be acute. Failure would be so damaging to EU growth and jobs that it would offset the most ambitious agenda for internal reform. And the consequences for Africa and beyond would be even more severe. The EU is not in crisis. But it is creating crisis at a global level