The Lisbon strategy and the open method of co-ordination: 12 recommendations for an effective multi-level strategy

Noting the transformations brought about by globalisation and the development opportunities arising from new technologies, the European Council identified at its Lisbon meeting, in March 2000, a series of weaknesses in the European economy: long-term structural unemployment, a poor employment rate, and under-development of the service sector. In an often-quoted sentence, it has therefore assigned the EU “a new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth, with more and better and greater social cohesion.” This however as we will see next was a second best policy option as the initial idea was to have a better macroeconomic policy mix, in other words a better interaction between the economic policies of the 12 Member States that share the Euro and of these with the European Central Bank. This strategy failed as some Member States resisted demands to co-ordinate their economic policies and nowadays the EU is still faced with twelve uncoordinated fiscal policies and one monetary policy.

The Lisbon strategy aims at realising the “knowledge society” by encouraging research, developing information technologies and establishing a favourable climate for innovation, by speeding up the removal of obstacles to the freedom of service provision and the liberalisation of the transport and energy markets. At the same time, it stresses the necessity to modernise the European social model, inter alia by increasing employment, reforming social protection systems in order to confront the ageing population, and by struggling against social exclusion. Sustainable development was later added. Even though this ambitious program, which endeavours to reconcile economic competitiveness with social concerns, has not really had the expected mobilising effect on public opinion, the method devised for its implementation has been the focus of much interest.