Authors Iain Begg | Gabriel Glöckler | Anke Hassel ... - The Europaeum

managed. Even if the world’s leaders start to act as decisively over climate
change as they did in the autumn of 2008 over the financial crisis, the sheer
timescales involved in dealing with the underlying causes of global warming
mean that temperatures will rise before they can be stabilised. The effects
may be unpredictable, albeit relatively moderate and short-lived, but they
will not be negligible and will tend to hit those least able to cope.
The post-Lisbon strategy
As the original 2010 deadline for the Lisbon strategy draws close and the
new Commission and Parliament start to grapple with over-flowing intrays,
a critical question will be what the underlying narrative for post-
Lisbon economic governance should be. Clearly, the intensity of the
economic crisis radically alters the demands on policy-makers and it may
be that several years of a post-Lisbon strategy will have to be devoted to
under-pinning the recovery rather than the forward looking goals that
were the priorities over the last decade, that is fostering the knowledge
economy and equipping Europe to prosper under globalisation. However,
even before the recession struck, it had become apparent that sustainability
would be to the fore and that much more emphasis would be needed on
the quality of growth. It should be recalled, in this regard, that the adjective
“sustainable” is prominent in the second half of the famous sentence from
the Lisbon 2000 European Council articulating the strategic goal, which
states that the EU should be “… capable of sustainable economic growth
with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.
One clear route is offered by Laurent Cohen-Tanugi who argues that the
EU has to go beyond simply adapting to globalisation (arguably the thrust
of the Lisbon strategy since 2005) to try to shape globalisation in a manner
consistent with EU aims. 11 He therefore advocates a division between a
reinforced (“Lisbon-plus”) approach inside the EU, to be largely in the
hands of member states, accompanied by an external dimension that
would be largely at supranational level The latter would involve common
policies, building on these already settled, but adding new ones to cover
energy, the environment, migration, development aid and diplomacy. He
argues that this dual approach is needed because Europe now faces a new
phase in its development that will require a paradigm shift.
The social pillar of sustainable development also warrants fresh thinking
and must be expected to loom larger as a result of the 2008/9 recession.
In all probability, the post Lisbon strategy will have to strike a (possibly
uncomfortable) balance between longer-term objectives and short- to
medium-term responses to the recession and its aftermath. Avoiding a
Chapter 11 – Iain Begg 159