Brussels, 26/11/2009 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has opened a consultation process on the Lisbon Strategy post-2010, and the ECOFIN Council will be examining certain aspects of it at its next meeting. In a conclusions document drawn up on the basis of a report from the Economic Policy Committee (EPC), the Council will be examining serious structural challenges to be faced by the EU I the next few years.
High unemployment and low productivity, combined with the knock-on effect of an ageing population on state finances and state aid measures to bail out banks and respond to the economic crisis will be the main areas of concern in the debate on the post-2010 Lisbon Strategy. The EU will have to move on from the current situation of crisis management to a longer-term strategy focussing on growth and jobs, explains the draft conclusions document. In the future, the new strategy should take greater account of interaction between different policies at EU level and Member States' policies. A strengthening of the EU dimension, particularly in terms of the Common Market, and the foreign trade aspects are desirable, as is an alignment of EU priorities and the European Investment Bank's lending priorities with the Lisbon Strategy post-2010.
The Council says that the new Lisbon Strategy targets should be decided upon and taken on board at the highest political level and the defining of a small number of key objectives could play an essential role in ensuring tangible action. Learning from the current situation, the Council says that there should be greater coordination of policies and surveillance of the structural reforms introduced under the Lisbon Strategy post-2010, and urges the Commission to publish proposals to this end that make use of all mechanisms available under the EU Treaty. Rigorous use of treaty measures is one way of strengthening coordination and respect of recommendations, adds the EPC document, explaining that follow-up of the current Lisbon Strategy has to be improved in order to focus to a greater extent on the general aims rather than the format. Greater peer pressures is one of the suggested ways of improving the Lisbon Strategy.
In the conclusions document, the EU ministers will encourage the EPC and the Commission to take into account the of communicating the future strategy by devising simple, transparent reports on how each Member State is doing in terms of meeting the targets and other agreed criteria, including how Member States are doing in comparison with countries outside the EU. The EPC explains that the snowballing of targets creates confusion and leads to overall incoherence in the strategy. The connection between targets and the aims of the policy is not always clear and the economic justification for some targets is debatable, writes the EPC, suggesting that thy be reorganised in each policy domain around a small number of 'big objectives' along with 'intermediate objectives' and indicators. The EPC suggests that more detailed analysis methodology be drawn up, going beyond measuring performance simply in terms of GDP. (A.B. trans fl)