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Europe 2020 - The EU strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth
Europe 2020 is a multifaceted strategy for sustainable growth and jobs for the next decade, designed to help Europe come out stronger from the world's worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
Last update: 6/8/2010
The objective of Europe 2020 is to develop:
- smart growth (education, knowledge and innovation)
- sustainable growth (a resource-efficient, greener and more competitive economy) and
- inclusive growth (high emplyment and economic, social and territorial cohesion)
This vision of Europe's social market economy for the 21st century is built on a partnership between the European Commission and the Member States. While the Member States set national targets, identify bottlenecks to growth and set out the policies to address these, the Commission evaluates progress, proposes policy recommendations and develops initiatives to stimulate sustainable growth and jobs at the EU level.
Europe 2020 and DG ECFIN
The Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) is one of the main DGs associated with the strategy. DG ECFIN's task is to provide a rigorous economic analytical framework to identify the key economic challenges facing the EU and its Member States, to monitor progress with the strategy and propose policy reforms in areas where progress lags behind.
With the adoption of the Europe 2020 strategy by the June 2010 European Council and with the ECOFIN agreement of 13 July 2010 on the integrated framework under the "European Semester" from 2011 onwards, the surveillance of Member State economies has been significantly strengthened.
In the context of the Van Rompuy Task force on economic governance, DG ECFIN is working on strengthening fiscal surveillance under the Stability and Growth Pact and the surveillance of macroeconomic imbalances. DG ECFIN will play the leading role in the new surveillance framework to ensure an integrated approach to policy design and implementation. Its aim is to achieve growth friendly consolidation resulting in healthy public finances and enhanced medium and long term growth prospects.
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