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'Lisbon' has become the shorthand for a process of change and renewal. The EU summit in the Portuguese capital in 2000 promised to make the Europe the 'most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world' by 2010. Now we are at the halfway stage EU leaders find themselves having to kick-start an idling motor.
IN 2000 EVERYTHING SEEMED POSSIBLE, the EU was enjoying near-boom economic conditions, the popular UK government under Tony Blair wanted Britain to be at the heart of Europe and found it easy to agree to proposals to restructure the economy and liberalise markets. These measures together with the embrace of the burgeoning Internet were expected to create up to 20 million jobs. Targets were set in a number of areas including the attainment of an overall 70% employment rate with 60% of working age women being employed by 2010.
These targets can serve as an indicator of how the process is going and it is estimated that another 15 million jobs need to be found if they are to be met. The recession and slow growth rates experienced in continental Europe have knocked 'Lisbon' off course. Therefore European leaders meeting recently in a European Council had to come up with new ways to re-invigorate the process. The final statement admitted that 'there are shortcomings and obvious delays' and re-iterated the EU's commitment to targets such as 3% of GDP being spent on research but, while there remained references to the 'quest for full employment', hard figures on jobs were distinctly lacking. Instead Member States were charged with drawing up 'national reform programmes' based on the existing yearly guidelines on broad economic policy and employment.
While, as feared by trade union bodies such as the ETUC, there was an emphasis on clearing away barriers to the internal market and cutting red tape, there was also a commitment to 'preserving the European social model'. Possibly the most hopeful inclusion in the summit document as far as employment is concerned was the setting up of a 'European Youth Pact'. As well as endeavouring to increase employment among young people in view of Europe's ageing population the pact aims to improve their 'education, training, mobility, vocational integration and social inclusion'.
On education in general the European Council called for lifelong learning to spread to all sectors of the population, especially 'low-skilled workers and for the staff of small and medium-sized enterprises'. The Europass scheme for vocational training should be expanded and harmonisation of professional qualifications across Europe completed. Other existing Lisbon objectives were supported such as innovation in environmentally friendly products and measures to protect bio-diversity.
The overall impression of this attempt to approach the second half of the Lisbon process is of a scaling down of ambition and a desire to make national governments more responsible for results. Perhaps the missing ingredient is still economic growth; in the words of John Monks: 'Internal market, the single currency, liberalisation of networks industries, reform of the labour market. You name it, Europe has done it. But where are the results of these reforms? The problem is not a lack of structural reform, it is neglect of growth- supporting macro-economic policies'.
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