La sratégie de Lisbonne et les nouveaux Etats membres

L’ancien Commissaire tchèque Pavel Teli?ka se
penche ici sur la façon dont les nouveaux Etats membres font
face aux défis de la sratégie de Lisbonne.  Dans
cet article publié par le European Policy
Centre, M. Teli?ka estime que, bien que ces
Etats n’aient été impliqués dans le processus de Lisbonne qu’à un
stade relativement tardif, leur expérience en matière
de réformes difficiles pourrait s’avérer précieuse dans la
perspective de la réalisation des objectifs de la stratégie.

When the Lisbon Strategy was agreed upon the candidate countries
of Central and Eastern Europe had other, more pressing issues on
their minds. They were just entering the crucial phase of accession
negotiations, implementing their reforms and in some cases
struggling with them. Their efforts were subordinated primarily to
one goal – returning to the family of nations to which, they firmly
believed, they belonged. Their eyes were set on EU
membership. 

It is true that the Lisbon Strategy appeared in discussions
between the European Commission and the candidate countries from
time to time. But even the Commission understood that the focus of
the candidates could not be on the Lisbon process but on other
goals, though some of the issues in the relevant policy areas
overlapped with existing Lisbon aims. This may be one of the
reasons why the Commission gave the candidate countries a large
degree of “liberty.” 

The accession countries, for the most part, paid lip service to
the Lisbon Agenda in the form of political declarations that
pleased the Commission. The question remains though, whether their
underlying attitude was all that different than that of the
existing EU-15 Member States. To be fair, the economic and
development situation addressed in the Lisbon Agenda as well as the
attitude of elites to the Strategy, differed from country to
country – but not a great deal. 

To read the article in full, visit the European Policy Centre website.