European Commission - Commissioners - Commissioner Ashton

As a child I grew up in a small village in Lancashire in the North of England. No one in my family had ever visited America. But we all knew what the American dream meant, and I suppose, secretly, we all wanted to be American.

The main reason was films and television programmes that were beamed into our living room. We saw the land of the free, founded on the principle of liberty and opportunity, where working hard was the route to success and where anything was possible. The US I grew up with was an outward looking force for good in the world. A nation that defined itself not by what it was but by what it had the potential to be. A nation that was open to trade in goods, services and, above all ideas.

The European Union shares these ideals. We are a large open economy that believes in democracy, liberty and openness. These are the principles that the European Community was founded on in the 1950s and they bind our Member States to this day.

Today we are at one of those moments in history where we need to remember what we stand for. Faced with the worst global economic slump for 80 years, the temptation is to retreat back into our shells, to pull down the blinds and shut out the world. That is a natural instinct when faced with a challenge on the scale of the one we presently face.

But sometimes retreat is the wrong reaction. Retreating to the safety of our own domestic markets is certainly a huge mistake - it is what tipped recession into depression in the 1930s and what could turn downturn into downfall today. So the choice we all face is between doing what is popular but damaging in the short term and what is right and sustainable in the medium to long term. The EU is staking its claim on the latter, and I believe that that the US should too.

Free trade => good doesn't seem like the most sophisticated of all possible analyses.