As I managed to get my hands on some very interesting slides put together by the president of the European Commission himself, I didn’t want to deprive my fellow bloggers of these clarifying graphs presented below.
The Lisbon Treaty’s goal was for the European Union to become ‘the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010, capable of sustainable economic growth, with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion and respect for the environment’.
The following graphs represent the period 2000-2008/09 concerning employment, education and poverty, and if you take a look at them you will soon discover that either 1) not much progress has been made during this period, 2) the progress has stagnated, or 3) it has decreased again due to the financial and economic crisis.
- EMPLOYMENT
2. EDUCATION
3. POVERTY
4. CONCLUSION
The Lisbon strategy has to deal with weak governance. Moreover, there is a gap between commitments and delivery, a lack of country ownership, and the involvement of regional and local authorities together with social partners is not always well developed. However the European Union is generally seen as prosperous and progress-making, it is still facing a lot of difficulties and obstacles and therefore it must develop new strategies to cope with poverty and unemployment in all of its Member States.
Thanks for sharing these Hanna. It would be really interesting to get some feedback or comments from the European Commission on these…
I second Lara. Commission, could you comment? Great scoop, Hanna.
23 million unemployed…
Thanks for commenting!
Lara and Clare, do you know how I could get the Commission to comment?
Write to their press office, show them your post and ask them if they would like to make a comment…
This is a great one, data speaks it own language of conclusions
As Lara suggests, contact the press office and ask for a comment. Maybe mention that since they are part-funding this, it may be of interest to you. Good luck with it, but I won’t hold me breathe.
I contacted the Commission’s press office, so now we can only wait. Thanks for helping me with this!
Thanks for raising this important issue, Hanna. You’re right that life is far from ‘paradise’ for many Europeans, particularly in the context of the current economic crisis. That’s why we’re working with national governments and NGOs to raise awareness about poverty (which affects over 80 million people in the EU) in the context of the 2010 ‘European Year for combating poverty and social exclusion’ - see http://www.2010againstpoverty.eu for further info. The Commission has also proposed specific targets to raise employment rates, improve educational outcomes and reduce poverty as part of the new Europe 2020 strategy - see http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020. We would be interested to hear comments and suggestions about what the EU is doing from you and your followers! Feel free to ‘like’ our Social Europe page on Facebook so that you can get involved in the discussions there - http://www.facebook.com/socialeurope
Thanks very much to react on my post!
However, I have my own thoughts on this 2020 strategy: it is a great concept and it could ameliorate things, but a lot of money is needed to accomplish the goals. But when money is pumped into the rescue of banks, there is less budget to spend on the 2020 targets. Will the EU have enough money for this strategy?
Yes, I saw those stats, pretty shocking, but good to have it on THINK3!