Barroso: We must get EU economy moving
The European Commission admitted today its plan to become the world’s most dynamic economy by 2010 had been derailed and set out on a pro-business course to create more jobs.
EC President Jose Manuel Barroso said the reasons for abandoning the plan set out five years ago in Lisbon could be found both in the past, with its listless growth, and the future, whose promise primarily lies in Asia.
“We have to get our economy moving,” Barroso told the European Parliament in Brussels. “If we can redynamize Europe’s performance, we can help guarantee a sustainable and lasting transformation of our continent.”
With high unemployment, the inability to take full advantage of a borderless EU economy and a lack of labour flexibility, the 25 nation EU lags far behind its ambitions.
Instead of superlatives, the Commission said in a statement “a renewed drive and focus on fewer, achievable objectives (was) necessary”.
“Lisbon has been blown off course by a combination of economic conditions, international uncertainty, slow progress in the member states and a gradual loss of political focus,” the statement said.
Now, Barroso said such cornerstones of EU policy as social protection and environment may be evaluated based on their impact on economic competitiveness.
Ambitions tabled in 2000 to become the world’s “most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” have been quietly toned down as EU countries remain mired in high unemployment and mediocre growth – in contrast to China and other surging Asian economies.
In November, an EU commissioned economic report said the ambition to become the world’s most dynamic economy was turning into a tale of “missed objectives and failed promises”.
Besides business-friendly measures, Barroso also wants to give member states more budgetary leeway for deficit spending in lean years to bring Europe back to the top of the global market. It is an issue that divides the EU states into one camp promoting fiscal rigor as a way out of the crisis and another calling for deficit spending.
Last year, the EU economy grew by only 2% and its employment rate remained stuck at 63% of Europe’s work force, well off the 70% target the Lisbon Strategy sets for 2010.
The European Parliament said this week it will take the creation of 22 million jobs in the next five years to achieve that.
Unemployment in the EU stood at 8.9% in December, compared to 5.4% in the United States and 4.4% in Japan. Some five million more unemployed were added when the EU took on 10 new member states last May.
The previous strategy ordered EU governments generate new jobs and growth by 2010 by boosting research and development spending, cutting bureaucracy and social costs, bringing the Internet into every home and office, increasing education spending and tapping into new technologies.
Barroso also wants EU nations to spend at least 1% of the gross domestic product on research and development and have private enterprise contribute twice as much. Taking the private and public sectors together, EU nations spend only 1.9% of their GDP on research and development now.
To promote a seamless EU market, he wants governments to adopt proposals like the community patent, which was supposed to cut costs for European industry but remains mired in language disputes.
