Lisbon Process Research Articles

Reclaiming Basic Skills: In Defence of Long-Life Learning

The author draws upon recent experience of providing consultancy services to a working group established by the European Commission in 2001 to facilitate the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy for economic, social, and environmental renewal in the European Union. The article begins with a critique of the ‘new basic skills’ identified at the Lisbon European Council on 23 and 24 March 2000. These were information and communication technologies (ICT), technological culture, foreign languages, entrepreneurship, and social skills. The article raises questions about the compatibility of the economic and social aims of the Lisbon Strategy. It also asks whether the Lisbon Process privileges certain forms of knowledge over others. Furthermore, who are the winners and the losers in the breathless rush towards increased economic competitiveness? The author concludes that the logic of competition inherent in the Lisbon Process may undermine rather than reinforce social solidarity; and that the chronic neglect of some really basic skills has had dire social and economic consequences.

Lisbon reinvented. Setting the Lisbon Process back on track, a European Policy Centre conference, Brussels, 8 March 2004

Lisbon reinvented. Setting the Lisbon Process back on track, a European Policy Centre conference, Brussels, 8 March 2004

Law and the Open Method of Coordination: Towards a New Flexibility in European Policy-Making?

The Lisbon process links a specific form of governance – the open method – to a particular goal. The codification of policy coordination in the economic sphere made this method available to other sectors. Its characteristics – benchmarking, national action plans and peer review – are constant, but there is considerable variation across policy sectors, as the method exists within the realm of soft law. At the same time, soft law is on a continuum with hard law, and since the Lisbon process moves into its second phase with an emphasis on national implementation, the difficulty of drawing a firm distinction between soft and hard law will become more apparent. This can already be seen in relation to economic policy coordination with ECOFIN refusing to trigger more precise obligations for recalcitrant states and the Commission responding by commencing judicial review before the European Court.