The Spanish must negotiate a replacement for the plan to make Europe the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world.
While presidencies of the European Council get to choose some of their priorities, others are simply a product of timing. It has fallen to the Spanish to negotiate a replacement for the EU’s Lisbon Agenda, the ten-year plan for making Europe the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world.
The Lisbon Agenda was agreed at a European summit in 2000 and Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will seek a deal on a replacement strategy, called EU2020, at a summit in March. Spain wants an agreement both on the broad aims of EU2020, and on a set of more precise targets to be achieved by 2015.
The European Commission launched a consultation on EU2020 in November, and the responses will feed into a policy paper that it will present in February, which will contain proposed targets for member states to endorse.
The Commission’s consultation paper calls for reforms to modernise education and skills training, and to make it easier for entrepreneurs to get access to finance. The paper also calls for investments to promote green technologies and the spread of broadband. Commission President José Manual Barroso said that the consultation paper sets out “the keys that can unlock Europe’s potential”. The document has, however, been criticised as “woefully inadequate” by the European Parliament’s Socialists and Democrats group, which wants the March summit to be postponed so as to allow time for a more fundamental rethink.
Click Here: new zealand rugby team jerseys
As well as defining EU2020 targets, Spain needs to get an agreement on how countries’ progress in meeting them should be monitored. Business groups and others have criticised member states for not taking enough ‘ownership’ of the Lisbon Agenda and it is expected that member states will decide to play a bigger governance and oversight role for EU2020. The Commission has said that the European Council should “steer” the new strategy.
The European Parliament is also expected to be granted a more important role in overseeing the strategy.