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Abstract1
The first ten years of the Lisbon Strategy implementation can be divided into three peri- ods. The first period, launched in 2000, has been renewed in 2005, while the renewed strategy can also be observed as consisting of two separate programming cycles, 2005- 2008 and 2008-2010. These periods have usually been articulated as Lisbon-I, Lisbon-II and Lisbon-III. The central theme of this paper is the analysis of the current stage (Lisbon- III) as well as recommendations for the preparation of the forthcoming Europe 2020 strategy. The Lisbon-III cycle focused on closing the implementation gap by increasing the effectiveness of the Lisbon objectives through the strict implementation reports. Further- more, it reconfirmed the close connection of the Lisbon Strategy with cohesion policy and the importance of the Lisbon Strategy social dimension as its integral part. By increas- ing the Lisbon external actions, Lisbon-III brought about the merger of the internal and external policy profiles of the EU. Despite many encouraging developments during the Lisbon-III cycle, a global financial crisis revealed the need for short-term crisis manage- ment measures due to the fact that the Lisbon Strategy as a long-term strategy was not suitable for such actions. Therefore, the governance line of the Europe 2020 strategy has to be considered from the long-term view of institutionalization of the EU that culminates in the Lisbon Treaty. The further integration of the EU and national levels, as the radical reform of the governance line, represents one of the main preconditions for the success of the Europe 2020 strategy.
1 Note: The paper has been written before the adoption of the Europe 2020 strategy. Minor updates were made before publishing.
33 THE EUROPE 2020 STRATEGY - A NEW VISION FOR THE EU
Introduction – the Lisbon jungle of theories and approaches
The Lisbon Strategy has been the flagship of EU modernization for a decade, and it will be extended for a second decade as Europe 2020. The usual definitions of the Lisbon Strategy cover a large variety of theories and approaches from the narrow- est possible economic policy (special issues such as “growth and jobs”) to the widest possible brave vision about the future of the EU (finalité politique). Given its com- plexity, a real “Lisbon jungle” has emerged around the Lisbon Strategy with a huge and rather chaotic literature stemming from all directions of societal interests and from all scientific disciplines concerned, and this has finally produced a patchwork of theories and a mosaic of approaches.
Basically, the Lisbon Strategy has been both a brave political vision of the EU as a global player and a large framework programme for policies, altogether an ambi- tious project to enhance the social capacity of the European economy to compete globally with the US and the new Asian global powers. The Lisbon Strategy has been an economic development programme focusing on growth and employment, ex- tended to become a strategic policy-planning or macro-policy mix with synergy and cohesion among various policy fields. This tension between the brave vision and the pragmatic programmes has run through the whole history of the Lisbon Strategy. The concrete meaning and importance of the Lisbon Strategy has changed drasti- cally several times since its conception in March 2000. At the beginning it was mostly a programme for internal reforms, and later it was expanded to include the inter- national dimension as the Lisbon external action. In fact, the history of the Lisbon Strategy has also been marked so far by the duality between its actual development and its evaluation in the successive EU documents, since these two lines have also diverged to a great extent due to the changing legitimacy needs of the EU institu- tions. Despite the growing strategic or vision deficit, the Lisbon Strategy theory has still evolved significantly during the past decade and it has contributed a great deal to the development of European governance. Although most policy issues have remained in a grey zone between vision and practice with some vague and inflated terms such as cohesion, competitiveness and the like, in the Lisbon Strategy, the EU has opened up to a large policy universe and has managed to trigger some increas- ing synergy effects
The need for the renewal of the Lisbon Strategy arises again in the troubled years of the global crisis when the EU itself is looking for a new identity and self-definition. The renewal of the Lisbon Strategy as the Europe 2020 strategy for the next de- cade after 2010 is a special task for the Spanish-Belgian-Hungarian team presidency as the priority of priorities. There is no doubt that the new, future-oriented defini- tion of the EU has to embrace both the pragmatic and the visionary dimensions because the ongoing economic crisis management includes both short-term eco- nomic measures and long-term radical socio-political reforms. In order to underline the significance of the Lisbon Strategy, one has to describe the great periods of EU history, namely:
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(1) From Rome to The Hague: the Franco-German reconciliation in the original Six – the European Economic Community as an “international” organization formed the nucleus of the integrated Common Market with a narrow policy universe. (2) From The Hague to Maastricht: the collapse of the bipolar world and the uni- fication of Europe – by drawing up the framework for its deepening and widening enlargement at The Hague Summit (European Council, 1969), the EU began its extension to the wider core of Europe and to new policy fields.
(3) From Maastricht to Lisbon: the EU as a global actor challenges the US – the EU- 12 was extended to the wider core of Europe, widened its policy universe through the three pillar structure and looked for a global role by competing with the US. (4) From Copenhagen to Copenhagen: the Eastern enlargement – in the first de- cade of the 21st century, the EU has embraced 12 new member states, and it has developed both new institutions and new neighbourhood policies.
(5) From the Lisbon Strategy to Europe 2020: the civil superpower in global com- petition – the global crisis has demanded a proactive external European role in the emerging new world order and an internal extension of the new community policies.
The Lisbon Strategy as European governance in its first decade can be described in three periods, since after its first period (2000-2004) it was renewed in 2005, and the renewed Lisbon Strategy can also be articulated according to its programming into two cycles, those of 2005-2008 and 2008-2010. These periods have usually been mentioned as Lisbon-I, Lisbon-II and Lisbon-III. The central topic of this paper is the analysis of the current stage of the Lisbon Strategy in order to contribute to the preparation of the Europe 2020 strategy for the Spanish-Belgian-Hungarian team presidency.2
2 This paper is part of a longer study on the Lisbon Strategy. It relies first of all on the seminal works of Maria Rodrigues (2002, 2003, 2004 and 2009). The Lisbon Strategy has also figured as one of the key issues for the emerging team presidencies. See, for example, Cohen-Tanugi (2008), and Fabry and Ricard-Nihoul (2008: 101-126) with their discussions of globalization in terms of Lisbon-I, Lisbon-II and Lisbon-III.
35 THE EUROPE 2020 STRATEGY - A NEW VISION FOR THE EU
The current stage of the Lisbon Strategy and the Lisbon external action
Lisbon-III – the global extension of policies and governance methods
After the gloomy mood in the mid-2000s, in 2007 the EU was again in a slightly more optimistic mood with the improving economic situation, and it began to pre- pare the third stage (Lisbon-III) of the Lisbon Strategy: “Europe is currently enjoying an economic upswing and reforms are starting to translate into growth and jobs. (…) The renewed Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs is beginning to deliver re- sults. It is contributing to the favourable overall economic upturn (…) A promising start has been made in the implementation of Member States’ National Reform programmes and of the Community Lisbon Programme presented in autumn 2005. (…) Cohesion policy also contributes to achieving the Lisbon goals. Member States are determined to take full advantage of the improving overall economic situation to strengthen the momentum for reforms and thus to further improve Europe’s global competitive position” (European Council, 2007a: 2). This year meant, in general, a watershed with the new financial perspectives starting in 2007, but the change was even deeper. In 2007, the panic related to eastern enlargement significantly diminished, when it turned out that the EU-27 could be managed properly within the EU transnational institutions. In this political space of the EU-27, both further policy widening and new forms of governance have occurred in the Lisbon-III cycle under the pressure of increasing globalization that finally ended in brutal crisis. In December 2007, the second Lisbon package was launched with some basic docu- ments published in 2008. The European Commission drew up a strategic planning and programming cycle. This new three-year cycle began in 2008 and in the An- nual Policy Strategy for 2008 the Commission indicated that: “The renewed Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs remains the major vehicle for promoting a more pros- perous, environmentally responsible and socially inclusive European Union (…) The challenge is now to capitalise on the current upturn in order to press ahead with further reforms” (European Commission, 2007a: 5).3
3 Actually, the Commission prepared two conceptual documents (2007c, 2007d) and altogether a package in five parts on 11 December 2007, out of which Part I (Strategic Report), Part IV (Broad Guidelines) and Part V (Integrated Guidelines) are of particular importance (European Commission, 2007e, 2007f, 2007g). In 2008, the Commission formulated a document on better regulation (2008a), the renewed social agenda (2008b), territorial cohesion (2008c), and the economic recovery (2008d). The Commission then followed with the package including the strategic framework for education (2008e), the global fund (2008f), the external dimension of the Lisbon Strategy (2008g) and finally a set of implementation reports (2008h) on 16 December 2008. This time ten basic tasks were identified and repeated a year later (European Commission, 2009b).
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Attila Ágh
Table 1. Integrated Guidelines for Growth and Jobs (2008-2010) Macroeconomic guidelines
1. To secure economic stability for sustainable growth.
2. To safeguard economic and financial sustainability as a basis for increased employment.
3. To promote a growth and employment orientated efficient allocation of resources.
4. To ensure that wage developments contribute to macroeconomic stability and growth.
5. To promote greater coherence between macroeco-nomic, structural and employment policies.
6. To contribute to a dynamic and well-functioning EMU.
Microeconomic guidelines
7. To increase and improve investment in R&D, in particular by private business.
8. To facilitate all forms of innovation.
9. To facilitate the spread and effective use of ICT and build a fully inclusive information society.
10. To strengthen the competitive advantages of its industrial base.
11. To encourage the sustainable use of resources and strengthen the synergies between
environmental protection and growth.
12. To extend and deepen the internal market.
13. To ensure open and competitive markets inside and outside Europe and to reap the
benefits of globalisation.
14. To create a more competitive business environment and encourage private initiative through better regulation.
15. To promote a more entrepreneurial culture and create a supportive environment for SMEs.
16. To expand, improve and link up European infrastructure and complete priority cross-
border projects. Employment guidelines
17. Implement employment policies aimed at achieving full employment, improving quality and
productivity at work, and strengthening social and territorial cohesion.
18. Promote a lifecycle approach to work.
19. Ensure inclusive labour markets, enhance work attractiveness, and make work pay for job seekers, including disadvantaged people and the inactive.
20. Improve matching of labour market needs.
21. Promote flexibility combined with employment security and reduce labour market seg-
mentation, having due regard to the role of the social partners.
22. Ensure employment-friendly labour cost developments and wage setting mechanisms.
23. Expand and improve investment in human capital.
24. Adapt education and training systems in response to new competence requirements.
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The “global” policy widening
Knowledge society was one of the basic issues already in the original Lisbon Strategy project, but the knowledge triangle (higher education – science – innovation) was fragmented among the member states and innovation (R&D) was financed very little from Community sources, since the Community role was reduced to issuing recommendations. Similarly, in the initial set-up energy policy and energy security were considered strictly as “national” policies, and member states clashed and com- peted with each other for energy resources in a fragmented market. Finally, fighting against global climate change was a common goal of the EU states already in the 1990s and the EU issued a series of exhortations for it but without any practical steps taken at the Community level. By the late 2000s it became crystal clear that these policies had to be managed at the Community level, including their financing. However, they have been stuck between the national and Community approaches in a hybrid zone somewhere, and they are still there due to the endless debates on competences and financing. Furthermore, these new policies are, ab ovo, of a global nature, so new policies have pushed for global governance. These policies of a global nature appeared in the programmes of the first team presidency (Germany- Portugal-Slovenia) and came to the fore very markedly for the first time in the 2007 spring European Council. In discussing the Lisbon Strategy results, the emphasis has been laid on the need to “further improve Europe’s global competitive position” by inviting the Commission to draw up the Integrated Guidelines for Growth and Jobs (2008-2010) (European Council, 2007a: 2; see Figure 1).
The European Council meeting in December 2007, at the end of the Portuguese presidency, dealt at length with the Lisbon Strategy in its global perspectives: “The European Council welcomes the presentation of the Commission’s Strategic Re- port assessing the implementation of the renewed Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs and making proposals for the next three-year cycle, including a new set of integrated guidelines, country-specific recommendations and a new Community Lisbon programme. (…) The Lisbon Strategy is delivering. The four priority areas of reform identified by the European Council in Spring 2006 continue to be valid: knowledge and innovation, business environment, employment and energy and cli- mate change” (European Council, 2007b: 10).
These December 2007 Presidency Conclusions are again part of the constant self- legitimacy exercise in the EU because global climate change, energy (security) and the knowledge triangle might have been occasionally mentioned before but they became priorities only in 2007 and afterwards, based on this document. These new policies appeared high on the agenda and, despite the often mentioned continuity, they were now prioritized as never before. Still, the Lisbon Strategy appeared more than ever to be a general framework for the EU policy universe, in which the “old” policies were confronted with the “new” ones. Thus, from the policy side, the de- bate began anew for Lisbon-III concerning the European social model starting with
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the European Commission’s basic document on 15 March 2007 (European Com- mission, 2007b) and concluding with a “new social vision” on 20 November 2007 (European Commission, 2007d), supported by an expert view from the Notre Europe Institute that initiated a re-foundation project for EU social policy (Jouen, 2007). Otherwise, in social policy the well-known two approaches ran parallel and clashed even at this stage: investing in people as prime movers of economic growth or considering social protection as a luxury item. The exhortations for social dimen- sions were kept but were pushed to the background even before the social crisis that was provoked by the global financial crisis.
Altogether, the December 2007 summit indicated a new beginning for the Lisbon-III period with a marked policy widening but it began also a new debate on the national versus the Community competences in all policies concerned, including their financ- ing. In fact, the Lisbon Strategy was relaunched for the second time in 2008 from the side of both policy and governance lines: “In 2007, there was a positive trend in terms of growth and net employment creation. (…) In 2008 within the framework of trio presidencies (…), a new cycle of Lisbon Agenda was launched for the pe- riod of 2008-10 with a stronger emphasis on the environment, energy, and social cohesion as well as on the external dimension of the Lisbon Strategy. The European Council of March 2008 also defined a mandate to initiate a reflection on the future of the Lisbon Strategy in the post-2010 period” (Rodrigues, 2009: 8).
Better governance – coping with the implementation gap
Already at first glance there was a manifest improvement in the Lisbon Strategy governance in 2008 due to the strict separation and re-combination of the national and Community levels in the Lisbon Strategy, with a bigger emphasis on regional/ cohesion policy, but also with an increasing reference to better governance and multilevel governance (European Commission, 2008a, 2008b). It enabled the EU to introduce a new government cycle in Lisbon-III with an ambitious goal of improving the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy targets to a great extent. The December summit in 2007 outlined the tasks of the next government cycle by concluding that: “The role of the regional level to deliver growth and jobs should also be increased, as recognised in the new generation of programmes of the cohesion policy covering the period 2007-2013. The Lisbon toolbox should be fully used by strengthening the existing horizontal coordination, developing tailor-made communication and in- volving all relevant stakeholders” (European Council, 2007b: 10).
Based on this cautious optimism, the 2008 spring European Council decided to launch the third cycle of the Lisbon Strategy in 2008-2010. It endorsed the new Integrated Guidelines for Growth and Jobs (2008-2010), with the same set of 24 concrete guidelines, as before in the 2005-2008 period. However, the new guide- lines emphasized that the focus of the new cycle will be on implementation, namely on the implementation of the 10 objectives identified in the Community Lisbon
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Programme, which provides a strategic reform agenda of the Community part of the renewed Lisbon Strategy. The spring 2008 Council document therefore “recon- firms the four priority areas agreed at its spring 2006 meeting as the cornerstones of the renewed Lisbon Strategy and at the same time calls for synergies among them to be exploited to a greater degree” (European Council, 2008: 2). Furthermore, it also “reconfirms” the close connection of the Lisbon Strategy with cohesion policy, and “the importance of the social dimension of the EU as an integral part of the Lisbon Strategy and in particular stresses the need to further integrate economic, employment and social policies” (European Council, 2008: 4). Altogether, realizing that the recommendations and/or guidelines were set regularly but their imple-