New growth priorities of European Union economic policy

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis and implementation of the EU common economic policy in relation to approaches for ensuring economic growth. The objective of maintaining sustainable GDP growth rates of European countries has become especially important for the EU institutions since the mid-1980s, when the EU began to lag behind the United States and the newly industrialized countries. Despite the large-scale projects such the ambitious multiannual economic growth strategies, the higher growth rates have not been achieved. Against the backdrop of growing criticism in the scientific discourse regarding the GDP as an indicator to assess the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies, the question arises about a paradigm shift related economic growth. The article examines the GDP, which might turn out to be incompatible with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the EU top priority at the moment. Therefore a question arises whether the EU is going abandon economic growth in favour of the implementation of the environmental priorities. The author explores the motives and evolution of the economic policy of the EU aimed at stimulating economic growth and finds out how the very concept of assessing the results of the policy has changed. It’s been revealed that the EU institutions began to focus less on the idea of achieving economic growth. One can expect that economic growth will become secondary to addressing environmental and social issues, and the GDP might be supplemented by alternative indicators for measuring economic achievements.