Brussels, 10/03/2008 (Agence Europe) - With the forthcoming European Council approaching, a new study has been published to feed into the debate on the implementation of the Lisbon strategy by the member states. The exercise by the Centre for European Reform (CER) provides a new categorisation of the performances of the member states in terms of economic, social and environmental reforms in 2007. It paints a very mixed picture which, on the basis of indicators such as employment rate, greenhouse gas emissions and expenditure on research and development, confirms the need for all of the member states to do more if they are to achieve the renewed Lisbon objectives.
The member states have committed to ambitious reform programmes, but at this stage, most of them are failing to achieve their Lisbon objectives. Only five out of 27 had achieved an employment rate above 70% in 2006, only two of them were spending more than 3% of their GNI on research and development and most of them had not reduced their greenhouse gas emissions, according to the London-based think tank. Denmark and Sweden were still at the top of the class in 2007, but Austria and the Netherlands stand out from the crowd this year. The reforms of the employment market, efforts to reduce the administrative burden on businesses and its capacity to reproduce the Nordic model of “flexicurity”, amongst other things, have earned Austria the praise of the authors. Alone of all the EU states, the Netherlands combine high levels of productivity with a high employment rate. Estonia's performance is also worthy of note - the country has gone up four places to 11th position, the top of all the member states which joined in the two most recent waves of enlargement. Closer to the bottom of the table, Italy (23rd place) and Greece (19th) came in for criticism for their poor performance in almost all of the indicators under consideration.
With an overall grade of C+, the assessment of the Lisbon process was “a bit harsh” in the view of Commission President José Manuel Barroso, who takes the view that the current trend in the member states is positive. “We must certainly do better, even if what we have done up to now isn't so bad”, he explained in Brussels on 10 March, at the presentation of the study. When asked about what would happen post-2010, he said that the best thing to do in his view would be to keep the outlines of the current Lisbon strategy, reinforcing them still further. What is important for the time being, he reiterated, is to concentrate on the implementation, rather than to disperse and run the risk of not achieving the identified objectives. For more information: http://www.cer.org.uk. (A.B.)