Last December the European Union approved a “shock absorber” fund and pumped €500m into it, hoping that this would allay European fears of globalisation – and in particular the French fear of delocalisation - or what we generally know as offshoring.

The European Union created this globalisation safety fund because it wanted to – paradoxically - demonstrate that the union supports free trade and open borders, but at the same time has a level of compassion for any workers who might be displaced by offshoring. The cash is sitting there in the bank and is ready to compensate anyone who loses their job because of a change in world trade patterns.

This is particularly difficult game to play. Anyone who has followed the election campaign of newly-elected French president Nicolas Sarkozy can see that politicians are masters of double-speak. Then again, forget about France and just listen to our own leaders. One moment the audience hears that the government will crack down on shirkers who don’t contribute to state coffers, the next the elected representative is outlining the cash available to help those affected by globalisation.

Yet, how does anyone define who is and is not affected by globalisation? In half a year, only France has applied for any money from the fund and that was to support the retraining of workers affected when a car component factory went bust. Does this mean that in the past half-year only one country in the union has been affected by globalisation, and even there in France, only one factory has been affected? Who says that it was globalisation that caused the company to go bust in the first place?

There are a lot more people displaced by companies going bust or moving location than displaced by offshoring. I recall speaking in New York about three years ago and I had checked some statistics at the time that showed companies moving from one state to another caused about 10 times the job losses of international sourcing. But who starts painting placards to protest against companies who move their operations from New York to California?

It’s a fact that we need to consider the training needs of a workforce that has to now compete on a global scale, but the creation of a compensation pot in Brussels is not really the best way forward. Regions such as France that are extremely concerned about global competition might want to examine the red tape restricting their own businesses from competing. The compensation pot is really putting the cart before the horse if they don’t analyse their own business infrastructure. London is now the seventh largest French city thanks to the large number of French entrepreneurs and workers finding the UK a far better place to do business – and to compete with the world.