Europe's difficulties in pushing through painful economic reforms remain all too visible - not least on the protest-scarred streets of Paris - despite warm words at the latest EU summit.
European Union leaders returned to their national capitals this weekend pledging to finally "turn commitments into concrete action" aimed at kick-starting the continent's long-flagging economy.
They also repeatedly denied tensions over resurgent protectionism in the 25-nation bloc, fuelled by a string of recent tussles between EU governments like France, Spain and Italy over industrial take-over bids.
But the well-crafted soundbites in Brussels about redynamizing the EU's so-called Lisbon Agenda - a six-year-old growth drive which has so far produced few tangible results - failed to convince many.
And nobody expects Europe's reforms suddenly to take off any time soon as a result of deliberations in Brussels.
"If you want to know why Europe's governments have been so hopelessly slow at reforming their economies, waste no time assessing the platitudes about the Lisbon Agenda," says the latest edition of The Economist.
Instead it points to events like those which have gripped France in recent days: protests against a proposed youth labour law which have increasingly turned nasty, with cars set alight and windows smashed in central Paris.
For many, the French law - a contract for young people allowing them to be fired during a two-year trial period without justification - embodies the kind of reform needed if the EU is to be competitive in the global economy.
Europe's reform drive is nothing new: the Lisbon Agenda was launched in the Portuguese capital in 2000, with the aim of turning Europe into the world's most competitive economy by the end of the decade.
But the end of the dotcom bubble hit the global economy hard - and, while Japan and the United States have since recovered, Europe is battling to emerge from the prolonged slowdown, with growth a paltry 1.3 percent last year.
Last year the Lisbon initiative was re-launched in a slimmed-down form, focused more tightly on creating jobs and growth.
And at last week's EU summit some claimed it was having an impact. "I don't think there is any doubt about the direction of travel. The direction is towards liberalisation," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"The arguments are moving, in our view, in the right direction," added Blair, who has long trumpeted such free-market reforms as the reason why his country's economy has pulled ahead of other members of the 25-nation bloc.
French President Jacques Chirac dismissed as nonsense allegations that Paris is guilty of protectionism, insisting an Italian take-over bid for French energy group Suez was motivated solely by financial logic and not politics.
Rome attacked France following a French announcement that state-controlled gas utility GDF was to merge with Suez, a move seen in Italy as an attempt to thwart a bid by Italian electricity giant Enel to acquire Suez.
"It's self-evidently untrue," Chirac told reporters in Brussels.
The latest attempt to kick-start EU reform comes as the bloc is seeking to pick itself up after the annus horribilis of last year, when French and Dutch voters rejected its long-sought constitution.
That political trauma was widely seen as a victory for people power, underlining the gap between ordinary Europeans and their elites trying to drive Europe forward in a direction which they opposed.
Supporters of the French protestors say their demonstrations - with a new day of action scheduled for Tuesday - could be a similar phenomenon, a public rejection of the social consequences of globalisation.
The free-market Economist said in a leader that events like those in France show that "the only real options are to accept change now, or to defer it until economies get into such straits that change is forced.
"The risk that much of Europe is taking by delaying reforms and appeasing protestors is that it ends up taking this second-best choice," it said.