Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honour for me to speak in this prestigious series of lectures. I am very grateful to Howard Davies for his invitation and his introductory words. I take it as a positive sign of traditional British international openness including towards things European - that the European Lecture Series takes place in the Hong Kong theatre and not the Brussels one. A fitting reminder that Europe's, indeed all our futures, lie not in introspection but in opening up to the outside world and mastering globalisation.

Jacques Delors once asked rhetorically "Who can fall in love with a common market?. Of course he expected "no one" as an answer. He was surely right; the single market is not a subject to make the heart-beat race. But it is at the heart of the European project nevertheless. A project that approximates more closely to a well-tested, reliable, sound and practically advantageous marriage, than a fly-by-night emotional fling. Something that has been there for so long that partners have come to take it for granted. Something that improves everyday life; makes it easier in many ways something you would only realise when it's gone.

Like an old marriage the common European market needs constant care and attention to keep it functioning. And here is where the analogy ends: Where marriages can be threatened by extra-marital activity, the common market is now being threatened by not enough openness, by shutting borders, by protectionism and market closure. A common market needs competition - from within and from the outside.

Protectionism denies everyone in Europe the economic benefits of market integration higher growth, and more jobs. This is why I have made defending the common market freedoms my credo in Brussels.