The Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs
At the Lisbon summit in March 2000, European Union leaders set out the Lisbon Strategy, a strategy to enhance the competitiveness of the EU. It was revised in 2005, with a stronger focus on the key actions to create growth and jobs in the EU.
DG Enterprise and Industry coordinates the micro-economic part of the Lisbon Strategy. This comprises the competitiveness agenda: ensuring the framework conditions which allow businesses to compete, innovate and create jobs, and policies which facilitate the emergence and growth of new knowledge-intensive activities.
The strategy is implemented in close partnership between the Commission and the Member States, with a clear division of responsibilities. Member States set out their reform agendas in their National Reform Programmes. These are adopted for a period of three years and there are annual progress reports on their implementation. DG Enterprise and Industry monitors and assesses micro-economic reforms in the Member States, including issues such as industrial policy, the business environment, innovation policy, SME and entrepreneurial policy, better regulation and the internal market for goods.
Whilst the majority of the Lisbon-related policy actions are a competence of the Member States, Community level actions are in many cases essential to complement and strengthen national action. DG Enterprise and Industry is responsible for coordinating the work on the Community Lisbon Programme which sets out the key Community level measures for economic reform and which constitutes the EU level counterpart to the National Reform Programmes of the Member States. In 2008, a new Community Lisbon Programme was adopted for the 2008-2010 period.
More information can be found on the European Commission's Growth and Jobs website.