Lisbon Revisited – Finding a new Path to European Growth

This report recommends action in two areas to set Europe on a path towards greater and more sustainable growth: injecting new impetus into the stalled Lisbon process and broadening the Lisbon agenda to new challenges.

Lisbon Revisited – Finding a new Path to European Growth

Summary of key recommendations

Accelerating the pace of Lisbon

1. Close the policy “delivery gap”The increasing gap between policy proposal and delivery is beginning to undermine the credibility of the whole Lisbon process. Faster delivery of the Lisbon objectives will require a better strategic match between objectives and the policy “Bag of tools” available to the EU and Member States, as well as more systematic involvement of all the different stakeholders including business and civil society. Specifically:

• The European Council must give the process greater dynamism and provide a sharper focus for the Lisbon Agenda, in particular by reviewing the EU Stability and Growth Pact, and ensuring that Member States deliver on their commitments;
• The European Commission should assume stronger leadership of the Lisbon process, ensuring that best practices from one member state are replicated in others, and improving both quantitative and qualitative comparison across Member States;
• The European Parliament should participate more directly in the Lisbon process to ensure the fulfilment at member state level of Lisbon commitments. This means working with national Parliaments to monitor their implementation of Lisbon policies;
• The Committee of the Regions should ensure that best practice and technical know how is passed on to the accession countries as quickly as possible;

2. Integrate the Lisbon Agenda into key European and national policy areas

To achieve overall policy coherence, the Lisbon objectives should be reflected in other key European and national policy areas, such as the Stability and Growth Pact, the EU Structural and Cohesion Funds, and EU competition policy and industrial policy.

3. Get the right balance of powers and responsibilities

Progress towards the Lisbon objectives could be accelerated through improved co-ordination of procedures within the Commission and between the EU institutions. Equally important to the success of Lisbon is identifying those elements of economic and social reform, which are best, carried out at a European level, and those which are best performed at a national, regional or local level. The Committee of the Regions can play a key role in defining this balance of responsibilities.

4. Build real ownership of the Lisbon agenda among European citizens

European economic and social reform must be supported by Europe’s citizens. More active and imaginative forms of communication are needed to make Lisbon meaningful to the lives of ordinary citizens. The Commission should actively consider a Europe-wide “re-branding” exercise for Lisbon with a focus on key elements such as opportunity, quality of life and social justice. The Economic and Social Committee should create a framework for carrying forward the recommendations to social partners and civil society, most especially by ensuring a continued dialogue and debate between the various stakeholder groups. Likewise, European civil society must work towards balancing greater competitiveness with social inclusion and cohesion, and should become more widely involved in policy discussion and implementation.

5. Keep the process together

Lisbon is a multidisciplinary process, and as such it must remain coherent. Viewing policies – and their funding – as an integral whole is key.

Broadening Lisbon to new challenges

1. Learn from the success of the Nordic model

While this report does not prescribe a single European economic and social model, it recognises the remarkable achievement of the Nordic example in combining strong economic performance with social cohesion and sustainable development. The Nordic model offers many interrelated examples of best practice which are potentially transferable to other economies across Europe &ndas h; such as the focus on lifelong learning as the key to innovation, labour mobility, and knowledgebased productivity growth; high levels of investment in research and development; the potential for entrepreneurial opportunity in the social and environmental fields; and the importance of incentives for investment and entrepreneurship.

2. Develop the European knowledge base

The European capacity for knowledge-based growth, already an important element of the Lisbon agenda, should be vastly expanded by accelerating the development of information technologies across the EU and their application within the workplace. A new focus on lifelong learning is needed, as traditional distinctions between work and education increasingly begin to blur, and job creation increasingly depends on labour adaptability and the development of entrepreneurship. Employers and trade unions should promote access to continuing training in the workforce without which a system of lifelong learning cannot be achieved.

3. Develop new areas of competitive advantage through innovation in the social and environmental fields

In a new “Post Fordist” era of economic growth, Europe should seek to foster new areas of entrepreneurial opportunity, for example by exporting social and environmental expertise.

4. Create a positive policy agenda around migration

The often emotive debate around migration needs to be replaced by a more strategic approach that acknowledges the complex economic and social dimensions of migration. Thus far little attention has been given to the role of migration in addressing the effects of an ageing EU population and future skills shortages. A starting point should be a detailed EU-wide analysis of current and future labour requirements by occupation, skill levels and industry sector. Longer term there is a need for positive integration policies – particularly in areas such as labour market and social policy – and greater efforts to secure international agreements on the global management of migration.

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