The EU's commissioner for employment and social affairs has praised Tony Blair's "very positive contribution to the politics and the future of Europe".

In a Westminster speech on Friday, Anna Diamantopoulou welcomed Gordon Brown's "family friendly" budget for taking active measures to advance the cause of gender equality.

Diamantopoulou went on to warn the UK that attempts to find compromise over proposals for an information and consultation directive, bitterly opposed by the UK, "could not last 100 years".

Urging a meeting of Trade Unionists For Europe to take the battle for Europe to the "factories, offices and shops where the euro will be won or lost", the commissioner contrasted the EU's social policy agenda, "competition and cohesion, flexibility with security", to the flagging US economy.

"We should not slavishly follow the US example. Europe is not the US. The US has created more jobs but we do want to see increases in the number of working poor and the socially excluded. It is not a system we want to emulate in Europe," she said.

Warning that the UK's delaying tactics to a controversial directive to give workers rights to information and consultation before job losses "cannot take 100 years", the commissioner said that she hoped consensus could be reached under the Swedish presidency.

The measure is now backed by 13 of the EU's member states and opposed by Britain and Ireland and will finally decided by a qualified majority vote, with or without a compromise at a May 7 or June 11 council meeting.

The UK's sensitivity to the issue, in the run-up to a general election, has already delayed the directive, originally due to voted on earlier in March and Diamantopoulou warned that "at the end of the day the decision must be taken".

Also speaking at the meeting, GMB leader, John Edmonds, told the commissioner of his anxiety over the compromise and dilution of European social principles such as consultation.

"We will all be campaigning for voting Labour here. But I would be quite happy to see Labour defeated on the directive in a council of ministers," he said.