The financial crisis has provoked a dramatic contraction in world trade. With economic activity declining and job losses rising, protectionist pressures are mounting. The EU and the US, which have built their mutual prosperity on open markets, must make sure they resist such pressures. But holding the line against protectionism is not enough. The EU and the US must recover their appetite for market opening and lower the barriers that still impede their commercial relations – with each other and the rest of the world. This means working bilaterally to reduce the regulatory obstacles that still gum up trade and investment flows across the Atlantic; and providing new impetus to trade liberalisation efforts within the WTO.

EU governments are taking increasingly unorthodox measures to prevent the economic crisis from overwhelming their economies. They are right to intervene, but their policies must not undermine Europe's long-term economic growth prospects in the process. The Lisbon scorecard IX argues that the financial crisis should not be used as an excuse to go slow on economic reform. The European Commission needs to resist what is likely to be ferocious lobbying for a dilution of competition policy and state aid rules. A retreat from the liberalising agenda of recent years would cause as much damage to the European economy in the long term as the financial crisis is doing in the short term.