NEW LIFE FOR LISBON STRATEGY.

• Position: Economic development in Portugal - Brief Article

Just over a month ago, many EU observers travelled to the EU Summit being held in Barcelona, convinced that the final sparks of life had gone out of the Lisbon strategy. Caught ahead of Presidential and national elections in France, general elections in Germany and squeezed by the economic downturn, it seemed that the Council's great modernising zeal that made EU leaders so ambitious in Lisbon two years ago had vanished never to return. Yet the European Council managed to do precisely what these meetings were designed to do: give a major impulse to the direction of EU policy-making for the years ahead.In terms of social policy, the general consensus is that the Barcelona Summit exceeded expectations. The European Commission refers to the Conclusions as "something of a curate's egg", indicating that some parts of the conclusions were better than others, but admits that earlier meetings had suggested the outcome would be a great deal worse. The Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations...