Sir,

Daniel Janssen and Poul Nyrup Rasmussen presented two different but interesting essays describing the Lisbon strategy’s weaknesses, along with their policy recommendations for making it more effective. But both articles at times seemed overly optimistic.

 

I agreed almost completely with Daniel Janssen’s opinions on the weaknesses of the Lisbon strategy, but only partly shared his views regarding the effectiveness of EU economic governance reform after the mid-term strategy review.

 

National reform programmes (NRPs), have become the key instruments in the new economic reform governance system within the EU, established after the mid-term review of the Lisbon strategy. These are expected to hasten reform at national level in all member states and make national governments more responsible for the Lisbon process than before.

 

Janssen hopes that “this new process will work efficiently towards a real implementation of the Lisbon targets”. But the effectiveness of the renewed Lisbon agenda is still an open question. Preliminary assessments of the NRPs’ credibility show that in most cases they are more bureaucratic than policy-centred programs and are presented merely to satisfy the European Commission. In most of the cases we studied there was little interest in making the NRPs a real tool that would be taken seriously by the political actors in member states. Also, existing inconsistencies between the economic policy coordination cycle in the EU and national political cycles have created a gap between the governments that create the NRPs and the parties who have to implement them.

 

The new approach to economic reform governance established after the mid-term review will probably be more effective than the previous one. Much will depend on the Commission’s national economic recommendation when assisting national governments’ tackling of important economic reforms. But after so many Lisbon failures, we should now focus on all areas of potential weakness rather than overstating potential strengths.

 

I found the Rasmussen article more problematic. Although I share many of the author’s observations, there are several that I cannot agree with. The effectiveness of “proactive macroeconomic policies” in delivering long term growth seemed to me to be greatly over-estimated.

 

I also have reservations concerning Rasmussen’s points on the European social model. He states that “Europe will only prosper if we stick to and modernise” the European social model. But does this “European model” really exist? There are several social models in the European Union – Scandinavian, continental, southern European, Anglo-Saxon. A new one is probably emerging right now in Central Europe, the Estonian-Slovak model. In each case, the model is a free and democratic choice of that society. There are no legal procedures at EU level that can legitimise one social model for all the member states, so we should forget about promoting one.

 

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen contrasts the “European model” with the “American model”. In the context of current European thinking, almost anything bearing the prefix “American...” suggests something not necessary pleasant or desirable. But, one should remember” that the basic ideas that so underpin the current American economic model come from European thinkers like Montesquieu, Locke and Hume as well as the many other thinkers whos inspired the great European tradition of classical liberalism. The American environment was more hospitable to the introduction of these European ideas because America had neither feudal barriers nor pre-existing state and social structures to prevent the full implementation of these ideals.

 

My conclusion, drawn from the Janssen and Rasmussen essays as well as my own comments, is that Europe can deliver good ideas conducive to economic prosperity, but too often fails to make effective use of them. Reforming the EU’s national economies in line with the Lisbon strategy is crucial to the success of the European project, but it is not the EU that has to implement these reforms. What the EU can do is to encourage ideas and models to compete with each other in a competition based on benchmarking and best practice so that the most effective models win.