Bid to exploit new economy will build on Lisbon goals

Date: 14/12/00

By Tim Jones

IF ANY country can pick up the EU's new post-Lisbon-summit economic reform agenda and run with it, it is Sweden.

The government which demanded a chapter on employment in the Amsterdam Treaty and has taken a decade-long roller coaster ride from recession, state-ownership and stifling taxes to world leadership in the 'new economy' could hardly be better placed.

And run with it they will. The new presidency programme promises "an effective and ambitious follow-up to the intentions of the European Council expressed at the Lisbon 2000 summit".

It is widely acknowledged that the March 2000 Lisbon summit marked a watershed in the EU leaders' rhetorical, if not practical, commitment to thoroughgoing 'structural reform' of their labour, product and services markets. The overriding aim, they agreed, was to haul the old continent up to US levels of sustained growth, job-generation and use of the Internet.

One area where they did acknowledge the Union's new-economy superiority was in mobile communications - not just in the consumption of services, a mania in Italy and the UK, but also in development of groundbreaking new products.

For this, the Union has Sweden and Finland to thank - more precisely, the world's number-one and number-three mobile makers, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson. Sweden also boasts one of the highest rates of Internet penetration in Europe - with a third of households online - and personal computer sales per capita exceeding the US.

The incoming presidency has promised to devote a chunk of its Lisbon follow-up summit in Stockholm in March to finding "better opportunities to exploit the new technology" and "adaptation and modernisation of common legislation". After Lisbon, new laws were passed to open up the last mile of telecoms infrastructure to Internet service providers. The Swedes are yet to commit themselves to a specific encore.

Stockholm will take stock of general progress since Lisbon but it is already clear that the conclusions will bulge with praise for Spain and Germany as they privatise their national airline and dominant telecoms operators; Belgium, Portugal, Greece, France and Austria as they cut taxes to boost business investment; and Italy for hacking away at social security contributions.

Little has moved following the adoption of the European Small Firms' Charter, however. Promises of a campaign to slash the waiting time for creating companies, make bankruptcy laws less onerous and less condemnatory, and bust open energy markets have still to be fulfilled.

The Swedes will push hard for progress in the creation of a single European capital market - a pledge emanating not just from Lisbon but also from the June 1998 summit in Cardiff. Finance Minister Bosse Ringholm has a ready-made agenda in this area, with the recent publication of the European Commission's timetable for blasting open financial services by 2005 and the linked report on implementation by a 'wise men's group' under banker Alexandre Lamfalussy.

Ringholm is concentrating on persuading the European Parliament to waive its rights to full (and very slow) scrutiny of all the legislation proposed by the Commission. If he manages just that under his presidency, Stockholm's time at the EU helm will be deemed a success.

Article forms part of a survey on the Swedish EU Presidency.