Brussels, 02/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - At the end of a two-day conference in Luxembourg, attended by Green members of the European and national parliaments, a declaration was adopted on the revision of the Lisbon Strategy (A Green Lisbon Agenda: where do we grow?) which, according to a press release, “casts a critical eye over the Commission's strategic paper on the Lisbon Strategy”. The Greens, who announced that they are “preparing for battle” on this revision, decided to create a network made up of national and European Green MPs. In the press release, MEPs Claude Turmes (Luxembourg) and Pierre Jonckheer (Belgium) speak out against the Barroso Commission's approach. President Barroso would like to give more weight to the governments in relaunching the Lisbon Strategy and our response to this is greater cooperation between our parliamentarians, said Mr Turmes. Mr Jonckheer criticised Mr Barroso for “coming with 1980s answers to resolve today's problems”.
At a vote of the special group of the EP for the coordination of the Lisbon Strategy in support of the broad outlines of suggestions by the European Commission on its revision, the EPP-ED group continues its row with the PES, which kicked off last week with a series of plenary votes (legislative programme of the Commission, Goebbels report on the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, in't Veld report on State aid in the form of compensation for public services). In a press release, CDU MEP Klaus-Heiner Lehne states that the Socialist group was not able to support this “reasonable” position, which was defended by Vice-President Verheugen (who is a Social-Democrat: Ed).