Lisbon Strategy

The Lisbon Strategy, also known as the Lisbon Agenda or Lisbon Process, is an action and development plan for the European Union. It was set out by the European Council in Lisbon on March 2000.

Preparation was carried out in relation with the broader reaching Council of Europe, the international organization of the "wider Europe", which also has charge of education in Europe.

Between April and November 2004, Wim Kok headed up a review of the program and presented a report on the Lisbon strategy suggesting how to give new impetus to the process.

The review group consisted of 12 individuals representing different Stakeholder groups. Among these are Anne-Marie Idrac, chair of RATP, the Paris public transport system, and a former Transport Minister; Will Hutton, governor of the London School of Economics and chief executive of the Work Foundation; and Niall Fitzgerald, chair of Unilever and co-chair of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, a lobby organisation criticized for representing US-American interests in Europe.

The Commission used this report to declare the social and environmental aspects of the Lisbon Agenda were no longer a priority and that instead the strategy would be revised to focus on the economic context only.

Background and objectives

The Lisbon Strategy intends to deal with the low productivity and stagnation of economic growth in the EU, through the formulation of various policy initiatives to be taken by all EU member states. The broader objectives set out by the Lisbon strategy are to be attained by 2010.

It was adopted for a ten-year period in 2000 in Lisbon, Portugal by the European Council. It broadly aims to "make Europe, by 2010, the most competitive and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world".

The Strategy

The main fields are economic, social, and environmental renewal and sustainability. The Lisbon Strategy is heavily based on the economic concepts of:

• Innovation as the motor for economic change (based on the writings of Joseph Schumpeter)
• The "learning economy"
• Social and environmental renewal

Under the strategy, a stronger economy will drive job creation in the EU, alongside social and environmental policies that ensure sustainable development and social inclusion, which will themselves drive economic growth even further

At this point (2007) the entire Lisbon Agenda policy appears to be heading inexorably towards abject failure by the target date of 2010.

Key thinkers and concepts

Contemporary key thinkers on whose works the Lisbon Strategy is based and/or who were involved in its creation include Maria Joao Rodrigues, Christopher Freeman, Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Luc Soete, Carlota Perez, Manuel Castells, Giovanni Dosi, and Richard Nelson.

Key concepts of the Lisbon Strategy include those of the Knowledge Economy, Innovation, Techno-Economic Paradigms, Technology Governance, and the "Open Method" of Coordination (OMC).

Bibliography

• Maria Joao Rodrigues (2003), European Policies for a Knowledge Economy, Edward Elgar.

See also

• Community patent
• Sapir report (written by André Sapir)
• Economy of the European Union
• Knowledge triangle
• European Institute of Technology (EIT)

Lobbying around the strategy

• European Trade Union Confederation, (ETUC update on the Lisbon strategy)
• Transatlantic Business Dialogue, which took part in the report for a new restart of the agenda
• Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe (UNICE)

External links

• Official EU summary on the Lisbon Strategy
• New web site of the new start for Lisbon Strategy