By Emily Smith - 26th March 2004
EU countries need to buck up their act and stop lagging behind the USA on economic reform, says European Parliament President Pat Cox.
Speaking at the Brussels EU summit on Friday, Cox said in no uncertain terms that progress towards meeting economic and social targets under the Lisbon agenda was “disappointing” and told member states to get a move on.
EU leaders committed in 2000 at a Lisbon summit to making the EU the world's most competitive economy by 2010 but progress has been slow.
“We have to move from how comes to outcomes” he said “or our delivery gap risks becoming a credibility gap.”
And he added “We need a lot more bullying and shaming of member states to deliver what they promise”.
He pointed out that Europe has 50 per cent more consumers than the USA, a larger share of world trade and a larger share of global GDP.
“And what do we do? We look to the US to give us a push. How come this vehicle we’ve fashioned isn’t capable of acceleration?”
Forty per cent of Lisbon directives have still not been transposed into national law.
“This is very, very poor”, said Cox, adding that the problem lay with national governments and not the European Parliament.
In particular he singled out the failure to establish a European patent – an idea that began to ferment 30 years ago and was agreed by MEPs in 2002, but still does not exist.
American firms take out more patents in the EU than do Europeans.
Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said that current economic conditions were not favourable to meeting Lisbon targets.
“We have had a downturn in the economy in the last years” said Persson.
“Much of the measures under the Lisbon process are on the supply side – they don’t work in the downturn.”
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