This paper evaluates achievements and shortcomings of the Lisbon Strategy launched by the European Union in the spring of 2000 aiming to increase the competitiveness of the European economy within ten years. A careful examination of the Strategy’s pros and cons shows that its general rationale...

With the adoption of the Lisbon Agenda in 2000, the European Union established for itself the ambitious goal of becoming the most dynamic and competitive economy in the world by 2010. Despite initial optimism, the first half of the decade has been dispiriting and targets established under the...

The aim of this new ETUI Working paper is to identify the changes and enduring features of EU political/policy discourse and to seek to explain them by tentatively relating them to factors regarded as their determinants. In the first section, a theory of EU discourse is presented, in the context...

To show global leadership and to foster the international negotiations for a long term international climate regime the EU has decided to reduce its GHG emissions by 20% relative to 1990 until the year 2020. These reductions will even rise to 30% "if there is an international agreement...