The economic costs of non-Lisbon : a survey of the literature on the economic impact of Lisbon-type reforms
SEC(2005) 385

Five years have passed since the Lisbon European Council of March 2000 set out its strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. This goal was to be achieved through policies boosting the information society and R&D, stepping up structural reform for competitiveness and innovation, and completing the internal market, while modernising the European social model and applying a macroeconomic policy mix that would favour growth. These objectives, and the policies accompanying them, have become known as the Lisbon strategy or the Lisbon agenda. The Gothenburg European Council of June 2001 added an environmental dimension to the original economic and social dimensions of the Lisbon strategy.



The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of Lisbon-type structural reforms. While these reforms do not correspond exactly to the present Lisbon package, they are designed to achieve the same goals as those set out in the strategy. Since many of these Lisbon-type reforms were already proposed in the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, the European Employment Strategy and the Internal Market Strategy, there exists a substantial literature on their impact, and by reviewing this literature we are able to obtain an admittedly partial assessment of the costs of not implementing the reforms specifically envisaged in the Lisbon strategy.

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DG Enterprise