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Parliament threatens to block Europe 2020 plan
17.06.2010, 16:07
A new plan, named 'Europe 2020', was launched for consultation by the European Commission in November last year, placing the emphasis on green growth and jobs through innovation.
The general outline of the plan and the idea of national targets were agreed by the 27 heads of state and government at the Spring European Council. The June summit will endorse the detailed draft of the integrated policy guidelines
According to the leader of liberals in the EP, the Europe 2020' strategy for green growth and jobs is doomed to fail if it continues to be based on the intergovernmental approach used by its predecessor, the Lisbon Agenda.
The Parliament is working on a common statement of all political groups on this. They are discussing the idea that if the Council simply copies the previous governance of the old strategy, they will start to block a number of texts.
The liberal leader strongly advocated for a "Community" approach to implementing the strategy, as well as for implementing EU policies in a broader context.
The Socialists & Democrats group, the second largest in the EU assembly, appeared to agree with Verhofstadt, while the Greens/EFA group concurred with him only partially.
Only the 'Community method' was capable of producing genuine solutions to the current economic crisis by triggering more European integration.
The Lisbon Strategy, started in 2000, was based on intergovernmental cooperation. The intergovernmental method, based on best practices and peer review, is the complete failure of this strategy.
"If we continue like that, we shall talk again in ten years about Europe 2030, but we shall also see the failure of the 'Europe 2020' strategy if we continue with this loose intergovernmental approach," he added, as an EU news portal published.
Verhofstadt said the Lisbon strategy had failed not because of a lack of targets, which he said were numerous - numbering more than 30 - but rather because EU member states kept adding more during meetings. But the main problem is not targets - it is the governance of the strategy.
He also slammed the Spanish EU Presidency for scaling down its ambitions on 'Europe 2020'. "There were some bold proposals in the beginning of the presidency, in January. But when I see the proposals that are now on the table, my fear is that we shall have a Europe 2020 strategy that is more or less a copy of the previous one."
Verhofstadt criticised EU leaders for their handling of the Greek crisis, saying that they had wasted "five months of struggle".