“Steadfast implementation of reforms is beginning to deliver results in terms of current accounts and regaining competitiveness,” the commission president, José Manuel Barroso, wrote in a letter to the leaders of the 27 members of the Union.

He sent the letter accompanied by charts that showed Ireland and Portugal as having benefited from rigorous turnaround programs, but that also showed countries including France, Italy, Belgium and Hungary as still plagued by high labor costs, compared with their trading partners.

He urged the European Union nations to remain wary of uneven economic performances across the bloc, lest the region continue to struggle with the imbalances that have contributed to Europe’s debt and economic crisis.

“When we look at productivity performance, we see that the very best member states are twice as productive as the lowest performers,” wrote Mr. Barroso, who as president of the commission is the top official in the administrative arm of the Union.

Mr. Barroso appeared to be delivering leaders a stark reminder that the problems that led to sovereign bailouts for Greece, Portugal and Ireland were still a cause for concern.

Mr. Barroso and colleagues like Olli Rehn, the E.U. commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, have been under a blistering assault from critics who say that enforcing strict budgetary targets to pay down debt and preserve the euro is creating a vicious cycle of low or no growth.

Mr. Barroso’s letter was evidently a response to such critics. He said that structural overhauls were contributing to a rebalancing of the E.U. economy, particularly where governments had undertaken the measures as part of their bailout agreements.

Ireland and Portugal had reversed trends in terms of their unit labor costs, which were now more favorable than before compared to their trading partners, according to the charts that accompanied Mr. Barroso’s letter. By contrast, according to the charts, unit labor costs in countries like France and Italy still were higher compared to those of their trading partners.

He also warned that a number of “states still need to invest more in structural reform to turn around their relative loss of competitiveness over several years.”

Mr. Barroso did acknowledge that there were deep and painful problems in pockets of the bloc, in particular in countries plagued by youth unemployment, and indicated that he would call for continued financial support to help address joblessness when he addressed E.U. leaders on Thursday evening.

The leaders will gather for what is essentially a check-in on the tougher budgetary surveillance they agreed upon over the last two years to combat the kinds of extreme debt and deficit problems in many countries that nearly brought down the euro currency union.

During the meeting Mr. Barroso is expected to show that the commission is willing to be flexible, by proposing that a number of states be given more time to meet their budgetary targets because of the lingering difficulties in the European economy.

Commission officials are prepared to recommend that Portugal, for example, be given one more year to meet its budget targets. And they say deadlines for meeting targets also could be extended in the cases of France and Spain, on condition that their governments could demonstrate progress in adopting fiscal overhauls.

The austerity debate could nonetheless produce friction at the summit meeting if, as expected, E.U. officials and Germany continue to emphasize regional financial consolidation, while the French, Italians and Spaniards continue to put far more emphasis on achieving economic growth.

President François Hollande of France is expected to lead the pro-growth faction, supported by the leaders of two big and struggling countries in Southern Europe: Mariano Rajoy of Spain and Mario Monti, who will represent Italy at the meeting despite having lost out in recent elections.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 12, 2013

A capsule summary with an earlier version of this article misstated the number of countries in the European Union. It is 27, not 17.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/business/global/barroso-urges-eu-to-keep-cutting-debt.html?partner=rss&emc=rss