Right-wing Eurosceptics often denigrate Europe, complaining that, compared to the USA, its supposedly inflexible labour markets and overbearing welfare programmes cause economic stagnation and prevent social mobility. To them, the solution is straightforward – roll back the state, cut taxes and social spending, and deregulate. However, the reality is somewhat different and the idea that the US outperforms the EU economically is not actually accurate.

Firstly, if it were true that social welfare benefits in Europe prevent job creation and a dynamic labour market, how was it that Europe enjoyed higher economic growth than the US for the bulk of the post-1945 era? How is it that the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden and Finland, with their 50% tax burdens, are among the top half dozen of the world’s most competitive economies according to the World Economic Forum?

Although overall economic growth in the EU recently lagged behind the US, this is in large part due to Europe’s slower population growth and ageing: in per capita and especially per-hour-worked terms, there is little difference in growth rates. Output per hour in France is higher than in the US, a statistic which demolishes the myth bandied about by the right about highly unionised and uncompetitive work forces in Europe. Productivity is only higher in the US because Europeans choose to work, on average, fewer hours than their American counterparts.

The shortfall of public provision in the USA has dramatic consequences. The US is one of only two countries in the developed world that does not provide health care for all its citizens – more than 46 million US citizens are uninsured and unable to pay for healthcare. The WHO ranks the US in 37th place, behind Colombia (22nd) and Saudi Arabia (26th). Similarly, child poverty in the US is among the highest in the developed world, with 11 million children living below the poverty line.

The Right’s claim that it is impossible to maintain high levels of employment with high social security spending reflects a poor understanding of how a complex modern economy really works. Why is it that both Denmark and Sweden have unemployment levels of under 6% with social spending more than double that of the US? Precisely because their social spending creates the highly trained, mobile workforce – the economic security and broad social consensus that allow Danish and Swedish enterprises to produce to the highest quality and to outperform their competitors from countries with outdated and inadequate social models.

More broadly, OECD studies have shown that Europe’s unemployment protection, even when less well designed than in Sweden or Denmark, has little effect on unemployment levels. The so-called flexibility of the US labour market should, it is claimed, result in high job turnover rates, yet they are lower than Italy and equal to France. Indeed, Britain manages to combine the lowest job turnover rates with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU. And, social mobility in the US is not necessarily to be envied: American workers are much more likely to suffer a decline in their income than European workers.

None of this means we should be complacent. Of course, economic reform and modernisation is vital. European countries recognised this in agreeing the “Lisbon agenda” to make the EU a more competitive, knowledge based economy. Reform and adaptation to new realities is at the heart of progress. As Anthony Giddens put it, “Nordic social democracy remains robust, not because it has resisted reform, but because it embraced it.”

The EU has been a positive force in enshrining the values of social inclusion and solidarity alongside economic growth in a way that is clearly different to the US model which allows private wealth and public squalor. The right, embodied by the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies, may claim that the EU has ‘destroyed’ Britain’s ability to compete, but this charge is not borne out by the reality. Britons enjoying the longest period of uninterrupted growth alongside the workplace rights enshrined by the Social Chapter do not recognise this as ‘economic destruction’. On the contrary, it demonstrates that you can have economic growth and social protection. So let us be clear, the social vision is central to the European project and is too important not to be fought for.