Lisbon Strategy

The nutshell, the main concerns of Europe's citizens,Jobs, growth, the environment and a proper social net.The current lack of economic growth affects all of us;, our pensions, salaries and our standard of living considerably suffer from it.To avoid this, Heads of State and Government of the European Union met in Lisbon in 2000 and launched a series of ambitious reforms at national and European level. By establishing an effective internal market, by boosting research and innovation and by improving education, to name only a few reform efforts, they aimed to make the European Union “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010.

We are now half-way through the process and the results are not very satisfactory. The implementation of reform in Member States has been quite scarce. The reform package consists of 28 main objectives and 120 sub-objectives, with 117 different indicators. The reporting system for 25 Member States adds up to no fewer than 300 annual reports. Nobody reads of all of them.

To remedy this lack of commitment of Member States, the Commission proposed to establish a new kind of partnership with Member States. It also decided to focus efforts on two main areas: productivity and employment. To make things simpler and more coherent, there shall be just one national growth programme and one EU growth plan.

The European Union cannot boost productivity and employment if Member State do not do their part.

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