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From the Lisbon Strategy to "Europe 2020"

The Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs, launched in 2000 by the European Council, was the EU's joint response to facing the challenges of globalisation, demographic change and the knowledge society. It aimed at making Europe more dynamic and competitive to secure a prosperous, fair and environmentally sustainable future for all citizens.

Despite of joint European efforts these objectives were achieved only partly and the serious economic crisis has made challenges even more pressing. To emerge from the crisis and to prepare Europe for the next decade the European Commission has launched  the "Europe 2020 Strategy" which was adopted by the European Council in June 2010.

The Europe 2020 strategy identifies three key drivers for growth, to be implemented through concrete actions at EU and national levels:

• smart growth (fostering knowledge, innovation, education and digital society),
• sustainable growth (making our production more resource efficient while boosting our competitiveness) and
• inclusive growth (raising participation in the labour market, the acquisition of skills and the fight against poverty).

The strategy sets five targets which define where the EU should be by 2020 and against which progress can be tracked.

• 75 % of the population aged 20-64 should be employed.
• 3% of the EU's GDP should be invested in R&D.
• The "20/20/20" climate/energy targets should be met.
• The share of early school leavers should be under 10% and at least 40% of the younger generation should have a tertiary degree or diploma.
• 20 million less people should be at risk of poverty.

Education, training and lifelong learning play a key role to achieve these strategic priorities, in particular when it comes to smart and inclusive growth. In order to meet the set targets, the Member States adopted a Europe 2020 agenda consisting of a series of flagship initiatives. Implementing these initiatives is a shared priority, and action will be required at all levels: EU-level organisations, Member States, local and regional authorities, and civil society.

Two of these flagship initiatives are particularly linked to education and training:

• Youth on the move: the aim is to enhance the quality and international attractiveness of Europe's higher education system by promoting mobility of students and trainees. As a concrete action, the EU's mobility programmes should be enhanced and linked to national programmes, the modernisation agenda of higher education pursued, and professional experience should be properly recognised.
  
  
• An agenda for new skills and jobs has the objective of creating the right conditions to modernise labour markets and to allow people to acquire new skills in order to raise employment levels and to ensure the sustainability of our social models, while baby-boomers retire. The concrete actions to be taken include the implementation of the Strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training "ET 2020", the acquisition and recognition of learning throughout general, vocational, higher and adult learning, and the implementation of the European Qualifications Framework.

The Europe 2020 strategy calls on each Member State to translate the common European targets into national targets and trajectories by taking account of its relative starting position and national circumstances. Based on a set of Integrated Guidelines for economic and employment policies bottlenecks should be identified and tackled through National Reform Programmes.