Commissioner calls for revival of Lisbon strategy

The EU’s plan to become the world’s most dynamic economy by 2010 must be revived and national governments must assume more responsibility for implementing it, senior officials said today.

Enterprise Commissioner Guenther Verheugen suggested each of the 25 member states should appoint a minister responsible for enforcing the plan on a national level and urged governments to focus on economic growth and raising employment rates.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told MEPs that the first five years of the plan did not deliver the results the EU had hoped for, and that Europe will only improve its economic performance if popular support is mobilised.

“In key areas, from productivity to research and education spending, early school leavers or poverty, we have barely made an impression on closing the gaps that existed five years ago,” Barroso said to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

The so-called Lisbon Strategy, set out at a summit in the Portuguese capital in 2000, has been derailed by the EU’s sluggish economic performance.

The strategy orders EU governments to increase research and development spending, generate jobs and growth, cut bureaucracy and social costs and boost education.

But last year, the EU economy grew by only 2% and its employment rate remained at 63% of the bloc’s work force, well short off the 70% target for 2010.

The European Parliament said last month that 22 million jobs would have to be created in the next five years to achieve that goal.

The strategy will be revised at the European Council meeting in Brussels this month, where EU officials promised to come up with a clearer and more focused plan.