Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the CBI like to go on about the importance of low taxes and labout costs for competitiveness. Yet the most competitive country in Europe is not the UK, but Finland, has the highest taxes and labour costs in Europe. This little nugget came from Stephane Garelli, a professor at the IMD business school in Lausanne.
"It is not just about costs, it is about also technology, education and culture," said Professor Garelli at a business briefing just outside Nice, organised by Unisys, the US information technology group. Appropriately enough, with the EU in turmoil, the briefing is called Should European Businesses Fear the Future?
It was refreshing to hear someone avoid the cliches about trying to compete on costs. It is ridiculous to believe that firms in Europe where labour costs are $20 to $30 an hour can compete with Chinese wages of 50 cents an hour.
For Prof Garelli, the ability of European firms to compete lies more with the issue of values, particularly with the attitude to wealth.
"In China, when kids see a white Rolls-Royce, they say I want one," he said. "In Europe, they scratch it ... In Europe we have to teach people that it is not wrong to succeed, but that it is right to succeed."
Where Prof Garelli does agree with the Blair-Brown-CBI worldview is the need to cut the red tape in Europe. Such layers of complexity, he argued, was reflected in the European constitution, which had 450 articles. European firms were losing out to competitors because of the bureaucratic hoops they had to jump through, according to Prof Garelli, who quoted approvingly the Jesuit maxim, "It is better to aks for forgiveness than to beg for permission".
A more fundamental problem was that Europeans had become bears, economically speaking. Bears seek warmth and comfort, whereas Asia was a continent of thrusting and aggressive tigers, "ready to kill" in the marketplace.
If that is the case, Europeans must be hoping that the Asian tigers will turn into bears in the not too distant future.
The Finnish example came in a talk about the economic challenges facing Europe, not just from China and India, but also a resurgent Japan after a decade of stagnation.
