HIGHLIGHTS-EU's Barroso on growth, jobs strategy

BRUSSELS, March 3 (Reuters) - The following are comments by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at a news conference on Wednesday on growth and jobs in the 27-country European Union.

The most recent comments are at the top.

"We need to focus on the single market in more areas. More competition, better trade opportunities. Closing our eyes to the world will not make it go away, so we should keep the fundamentals ... But there is something that we have to do more that was not there before: coordination, common governance with coherence and with persistence, with continuity. Only then can we in fact have a clear European strategy working together, European institutions, member states and of course European society and European citizens as a whole."

"Now we need to continue to climb out of this situation. It will be tough for some time yet, but we will get there. We will not rest until this has been achieved."

"Divergences between member states have a direct impact on everyone else. We are more interdependent than ever. We need economic coordination now more than ever."