The 'Community Lisbon programme' consists of 50 initiatives (regulatory actions, financing actions and policy development) which have been or will be taken at EU level to refocus the EU's economic reforms agenda on growth and jobs.
There are no genuinely new initiatives in the list of fifty measures but the Commission has grouped them together under eight "key measures with a high European value-added":
- supporting knowledge and innovation;
- reform of state aid policy;
- simplification of the regulatory framework;
- completion of the internal market for services;
- global agreement on the Doha round;
- removal to obstacles to physical, labour and academic mobility;
- developing a common approach to economic integration;
- supporting efforts to deal with the social effects [eg job losses] of economic restructuring.
Commenting on Mr Verheugen's 'new' programme, the Party of European Socialists (PES) expressed disappointment over the Commission's "lack of ideas to boost demand". President of the PES Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said: "Europe desperately needs economic growth and new jobs but the European Commission will not achieve it without investment. Europe needs public and private investment to accompany reform."
