Gordon Brown has today set out plans for the UK's long-awaited European economic reform white paper.

The chancellor's paper focuses on measures to complete the EU's single market ahead of the Barcelona summit on economic reform on March 15.

The announcement was overshadowed when the shadow chancellor, Michael Howard, accused the Brown of failing to make a full statement to the Commons

In a brief Commons debate, Brown insisted that the government would fight hard to ensure that the final blockades to EU-wide competition were removed.

"We are pushing forward with the agenda to open up the single market," Brown told MPs. "We are going to Barcelona with an aggressive and forward looking agenda."

The EU reform agenda, Brown argued, assumes a new imperative with the accession of former east European and Warsaw Pact countries to the European community.

The UK is concerned that if Europe fails to grasp reform the wrong message will be sent to EU candidates such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

""EU enlargement will happen - we welcome it. But we must ensure that it takes place in a way that increases trade, stability and prosperity within the EU, rather than slowing it down," he said.

A shake-up in three key and political areas, product markets, labour markets and capital markets was agreed at a Lisbon summit in 2000.

"Some progress has been made since Lisbon. Five million new jobs, agreement on a new regulatory framework for communications, rapid progress in increasing internet use liberalising of postal services and a start to reforming state aids," Brown told journalists.

"But we still have a long way to go. If the EU matched US productivity we would be better off by an average of £5000 per person.

Since then measures have floundered on obstruction by individual member states.

EU heavy hitters such as Britain, Germany and France have dragged their feet over commitments to liberalise postal services, financial services and labour and energy markets.

Subsidies to airline industries and commission rules on cross-border takeovers are further areas of disagreement.

Brown is urging the three main world economic blocs - the EU, Japan and the US - to clean-up their acts to boost global growth.

Japan is being urged to overhaul its failing banking sector, the US to open up its jealously-guarded domestic markets and the EU to follow through its own combination of neo-liberal economics and social regulation.

"Each continent must play its full part in restoring world growth. We can all do more. America by keeping markets open. Japan by radical banking reform. Europe by the reform of capital, labour and product markets we recommend today. These are vital to facing the challenges of global competition, EU enlargement and eight per cent EU unemployment," said the chancellor.

More controversially, for Labour and its trade union supporters, the white paper follows a meeting between Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi a fortnight ago where the two leaders agreed on the need for a radical overhaul of employment laws and regulations across Europe.

In a move that prompted a hostile question from Labour backbencher, Denzil Davies, at PMQs on Wednesday, the British prime minister and his right-wing Italian opposite number called for labour market deregulation across the EU.

"European labour markets are characterised by structural problems. Fundamental reforms are needed if we are to tackle the challenges ahead," said a joint statement.

"The current regulatory framework often reflects forms of work organisation which are now obsolete. For this reason it is necessary to reinvigorate the structural reform process to ensure the efficient functioning of our labour markets and to develop more targeted labour market policies."

Unison, the UK's largest trade union, has already forged an alliance with unions in Spain and Italy to oppose the UK-led reform model.

Unison chief, Dave Prentis, attacked the Blair/Berlusconi meeting saying: "There is an irony that the only thing this country can export is privatisation."