Say what you like about the sybaritic Blairs (and doing so has become a favourite silly-season activity), they do understand the importance of holidays. Not for them the one week somewhere and a couple of city breaks later. They go away for August. Like all good continental European families, the Blairs pack their trunk and relax into that enviable state of becoming different people - the kind who get up with the morning sun streaming through windows, play strange ball games and learn the names of their children's best friends.

They are not alone. In Italy, little more than a beach um-brella is stirring. Against determined opposition and 10 per cent unemployment, the French are hanging on to their right to abandon the cities for the campsite or holiday home for the entire month. In Germany, the annual average holiday entitlement is a whopping 42 days.

In Britain, we average 25 days' holiday each year, though workers in the hotel and leisure industry (ironically enough) still average fewer than 22 days. In addition to poor holiday entitlement, we work the longest hours in Europe.

More than one in six of us works more than the upper limit of 48 hours set by the 1993 EU directive. Bargain-basement Britain secured an opt-out to this socially progressive legislation, with the result that now, more than 1.5 million people here work in excess of 55 hours a week. Yet, despite short holidays and long hours, Britain still has one of the EU's lowest levels of GDP per head of the working population.

At the beginning of the year, the European Union announced its intention to investigate bringing the UK into line with EU practice. The opt-out, argued Anna Diamantopoulou, the then EU social affairs commissioner, had been abused. It had been conceded on the understanding that workers would have to agree formally to waive their rights to a 48-hour maximum working week. But, according to the European Commission, such agreements are seldom reached properly and workers are routinely coerced by employers into working longer hours. Unsurprisingly, the CBI supports the continuation of the opt-out, while the Trades Union Congress wants the UK to sign up fully to the directive.

In this context, the increasing clamour for an end to "the 35-hour week" - as if one were on the horizon - seems off-beam. Free-marketeers such as those on the Economist argue with relish that it is proving unworkable in France, which enshrined it in law in 1998, and where unemployment has reached 10 per cent. Others report delightedly of the German unions having to cave in to demands to work longer hours (for the same money) or have their jobs exported to Hungary.

This month, Denis MacShane, the minister for Europe, entered the fray, arguing that an obsession with the 35-hour week had done France and Germany considerable harm in comparison with lower-unemployment economies such as Britain and Sweden. Focusing on nominal working hours was fatuous, he argued, particularly if people were bringing their hours back up to 40 or more with overtime. There is some logic in that. And to those of us with the privilege of a pleasant job offering challenges that sometimes require 12 or more hours of continuous involvement over several days (for example, producing a play at the Edinburgh Festival), it seems illiberal to demand that tools be downed at the diktat of the clock.

However, that is not the reality for most people. Public service workers are reporting sky-rocketing levels of stress through overwork. Indeed, at least 10 per cent of the Brit- ish workforce suffers from serious stress. Richard Reeves writes on page 19 of the destructive impact of poor work/life balance on men's ability to create rounded lives in which they can be good fathers and partners, as well as fulfilled workers.

Such ills are well-known in the US, whose workaholic culture British employers seem hell-bent on imitating. Yet US workers, too, are questioning the long-hours culture and making radical changes, according to Putting Work in Its Place: a quiet revolution, a study of work published here later this month. The book's authors, Peter Meiksins and Peter Whalley, professors of sociology at Cleveland State and Loyola Universities, argue that the long-hours culture is a product of social insecurity. They also warn us to beware of US statistics: large numbers of unemployed or casual workers are simply missing. What Americans want, according to Meiksins and Whalley, and what many are gradually securing by opting to work part-time, is to be more European.

Just like Tony and Cherie. One can only hope that, upon his return from Sardinia, our leader will promptly abandon our anachronistic opt-out from EU practice.

That one seems a bit foreign

Excuse us, but do you mind if we ask you what language you are muttering in? You do mind? Well, you see, the Home Office has asked us to check on our readers (just as they've got the transport police checking on people taking the Tube). Yes, we know the New Statesman is an English-language magazine, but we did note that you were turning the pages from the back, which is not strictly the European way, and so, before you go any further, would you mind showing us some sort of ID that proves you have a right to read in this country? Stalinist? Oh, come on, this is an "intelligence-led" and "targeted" operation, not random harassment. So far, our efforts have netted three or four illegal subscribers and all our reader-watchers are trained and experienced officers . . . What's that? You just prefer to start with Andrew Martin and the lonely-hearts ads? Wait right there, please, while we call the immigration police . . .

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