The Financial Times reports that: "A contentious €500m ($672m) European Union “shock ab­sorber” fund to help workers who lose their jobs to global competition has received just two requests for aid since its launch... The low level of take-up from the fund, created at the end of last year, has prompted claims from liberals in the European Commission that the threat from the offshoring of jobs to Asia and elsewhere has been exaggerated."

Despite decades of fears that globalisation is bad for jobs, Europe today has more jobs than ever before, and on average they are better, more highly skilled ones than in the past. Internal free trade within EU countries - the single market - has created 2.75m extra jobs since 1992.