In the firing line

Implementing and assessing the Lisbon strategy is impossible without the participation of Europe’s regions, CoR president Luc Van den Brande told the European Council in March. Sarah Collins reports

When EU ministers launched the second three-year cycle of the Lisbon strategy at the March spring council, they specifically recognised that the role of the regions in delivering growth and jobs would “lead to more coherent and effective policymaking”. But this notion is nothing new for Luc Van den Brande, the recently appointed president of the Committee of the Regions (CoR). As far back as 2006, EU ministers tasked his predecessor with assessing the effects of the revised Lisbon strategy at local level; the resulting report made history as it brought CoR to the table for the first time at a council summit.

“We are not just sub-contractors of what is decided top-down,” CoR president Luc Van den Brande told journalists at the spring council just after presenting his report to ministers. “I welcome the fact that EU leaders have asked the CoR for its input on one of the biggest challenges Europe is facing. The council’s request for CoR’s analysis on the revised Lisbon strategy’s effects and its outlook beyond 2008 reflects the growing importance of Europe’s regions and cities.” The report analyses the effects of the revised Lisbon strategy, based on responses from over 100 regions and cities across 26 member states. Van den Brande has long been convinced that local government should be more involved in policymaking, and the facts in the report largely bear his opinion out.

According to the findings, the Lisbon strategy suffers from a development that Van den Brande calls the “Lisbon paradox”. While regions and cities and are engaging in virtually all Lisbon-related policy areas, they feel that the strategy itself doesn’t contribute to their policies in the same way. Almost 100 per cent of regions and cities think they should have a bigger role in implementing the strategy. For Van den Brande, “the key issue is that it’s only possible to go for the realisation of the Lisbon strategy when all decision-making levels are involved”. Regions and cities deliver more than 66 per cent of all investment in the EU, he says, but their voices are not being heard.

The strategy, launched in 2000 and revised in 2005, sets out to modernise Europe’s economy by establishing guidelines in specific priority areas, including growth and jobs, energy and climate change and knowledge and innovation. For Van den Brande, regions and cities are the first in line to implement any actions that EU ministers commit to under Lisbon, so their position in the firing line is crucial. But the importance of Lisbon, he says, goes from the ground right to the global level, and there is a danger of letting the momentum slip. “We are talking about job creation and modernisation of our societies, not just for the union” he said. “We are a key player in the world economy. Give regions an adequate place in the institutional system; otherwise we’ll pay dearly.”

For the regions, the fundamental tools to achieve the Lisbon goals are regional policy and structural funds. Van den Brande says that the proof is in the agreement between commission and council in 2005 to ‘earmark’ a percentage of the EU’s cohesion funds for Lisbon projects. This led to increases in innovation and major changes in spending for 57 per cent of Europe’s regions and cities, he explains. But unfortunately for CoR, the new phase of EU cohesion policy (2007-2013) still places too much emphasis on working closely with member states rather than regions in implementing it.

Van den Brande has asked the council to provide CoR with a regular mandate to report like this on the progress of the Lisbon strategy, and has said that the CoR would back, in return, a Europe-wide awareness campaign to raise support for the strategy. But Van den Brande doesn’t stop there: he has plans for the Lisbon strategy beyond the end of this three-year cycle in 2010. “We should reflect on its evolution, especially after 2013. Things are quickly changing. Territorial, economic and social cohesion should be linked to the strategy for more growth and jobs. It’s important that we go right to the end.”