Stakeholders see need to link Lisbon agenda and sustainable development

At a public hearing organised by the EESC on 20-21 March, most stakeholders spoke out in favour of a better integration of the the Lisbon reform agenda into the EU’s overarching sustainable development strategy.

The Economic and Social Committee organised a public hearing on the EU-SDS review, together with the other institutions. More than 200 stakeholders debated the state of play of the current review and expressed disappointment about the Commission’s apparent neglect of an earlier stakeholder conference in April 2005 when preparing its December review.

Several speakers at the conference wished to merge the two main strategies of the EU: the relaunched strategy for growth and jobs (the “Lisbon agenda”) and the long-term sustainable development strategy. The Austrian Presidency representative at the conference compared the SDS with a “marathon”, whereupon other stakeholders responded that Lisbon could then be seen as “a sprint inside the marathon race” and that there was a risk that these “sprints” could “lead the runner off-track for his marathon”.

Here are some of main recommendations mentioned by a majority of stakeholders during the two-day stakeholder debate:

• endorsement of the 6 priority areas of the Commission’s review proposal (climate change and clean energy, public health, social exclusion, management of natural resources, sustainable transport, global poverty) but wished to add a seventh priority: sustainable competitiveness and innovation;
• urgent need to develop an EU strategy for sustainable consumption and production, as promised during the Johannesburg conference;
• a new target on reducing the EU-25’s “ecological footprint” (an indicator measuring the consumption of physical space and natural resources by a country or a person); 
• more and better national sustainable development strategies and action plans (the meeting could not agree on voluntary or mandatory national plans);
• a new Sustainable Development Council or joint yearly meetings of ECOFIN, General Affairs and Development Council formations on sustainable development;
• reviewing Lisbon and SDS during the same European Council, instead of one in March and one in June;
• sustainability impact assessments for all EU subsidies and funds;
• each Presidency to present its own roadmap for EU-SDS and all DGs to have SD statements of objectives;
• SD criteria to be used for the review of the EU’s long-term budget (“financial perspective”) in 2008;
• sustainable development committees to be set up in the European Parliament and the EESC;
• a Communication strategy for SDS;
• clear guidelines for coherence between the national sustainable development strategies;
• an independent EU advisory council for SDS.

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