16/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Polish Lisbon Strategy Forum (PLSF), a Polish think-tank set up in 2003 has published a report on the reform plans of the EU Member States in the context of the Lisbon Strategy, under the heading National Reform Programmes: Key to a Successful Future of the European Project? The report was edited by Mariusz-Jan Radlo, lecturer in economics in Warsaw, with an introduction by Jan Szomburg, president of the Gdansk Institute for the Market Economy. This 65 page report critically examines the reform programmes of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and the Netherlands. In a press release, the authors note that the European Commission report on the national programmes could appear, “a little too optimistic” and that in general these programmes appear to be more bureaucratic than policy centred documents, based on excising programmes that had been presented to merely satisfy the Commission”. They note that “the three-year economic coordination cycle (2005-08), based on the NRPs, is not consistent with political cycles in Member States. This, again, weakens ability of the NRPs to influence governments, because crucial and usually painful structural reforms are almost never implemented at the end of political cycle”. Site: http: //http://www.pfsl.pl ).