UK PRESIDENCY PLANS INFORMAL SUMMIT ON FUTURE OF EUROPE.

• Position: Brief article

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced he will hold an informal summit during the UK Presidency to look at the future of the EU, focusing on the European social model and how it might need changing to adapt to new competitive challenges. Speaking after a meeting with the European Commission in London to launch the start of the UK Presidency, Mr Blair said he wanted to "initiate in a cooperative way" a debate on the future of Europe where European leaders could discuss how Europe "makes progress" and how to give it "energy and commitment". Mr Blair said that the European Commission would produce a paper in time for the summit in October a paper on the sustainability of the European social model.

Mr Blair said the aim of the summit would be to get people together to "make sense" of what he called the European "dilemma"...