World Business (A Special Report): So Far to Go --- Gordian Knot: To achieve real competitiveness, the EU Will first have to win concessions from its Most comfortable citizens
Can Europe compete? For nearly a decade, Western European nations have pinned their hopes for economic prosperity on unification -- the merging of their varied economies into the world's biggest single market. But to date, the pace of unification has been slower than anticipated, thanks in part to a vicious, lengthy recession from which the Continent is just now emerging.</br></br>Meanwhile, a streamlined and revitalized U.S. industrial sector has</br></br>formed its own economic bloc with Canada and Mexico, a union that</br></br>eventually could spread to Latin America or across the Pacific. And</br></br>China has joined Japan as an Asian economic colossus, with smaller,