The FINANCIAL -- The European Union cannot avoid deeper integration if it wants to succeed on international markets, the Czech and Belgian foreign ministers said Thursday in Prague.

"If Europe fails to unite against emerging superpowers such as China, India and Brazil, and existing ones like the US and Japan, it will hardly succeed," Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said.

"So we'll have to unite," he added.

According to EUbusiness, his Belgian counterpart Didier Reynders said Europe needed to "organise greater capacities to make trade with some partners."

"We have organised an agreement with Korea, we need to do the same with Japan, China, India and other partners," said Reynders, former finance minister.

"It's the only solution to that we will have growth, more jobs and a real capacity to compete with the rest of the world," he added.

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