Germany and the US united in furthering Lisbon process

Date:18/09/03

By Karen Carstens

WHEN Ann Mettler returned to her native Germany after a seven-year stint in the United States, she hardly recognized the country she had left behind as a high school graduate.

Mettler, a 32-year-old political scientist who went on to help manage the annual World Economic Forum's Davos global policy pow-wow and other brainstorming sessions for the Geneva-based organization, sees little appeal in living in Germany today.

To vent her frustration at the nation's economic malaise - a seemingly immovable 10% unemployment rate plagues the EU's biggest member state - she wrote an open letter to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which appeared last month in the Wall Street Journal Europe and its sister title, the German business daily Handelsblatt.

"Twelve years ago, I left to study in the United States armed with my Abitur, my German diploma, which I knew to be among the best in the world," she writes.

"I thought I was the vanguard of one of the world's oldest and proudest cultures - a place whose engineers designed the finest products, whose small companies dominated their markets, whose experts could inevitably be counted among the best in their field.

"When I returned the shock was profound."

Enter Paul Hofheinz, aged 41, a veteran Brussels-based business editor who also briefly worked at the World Economic Forum.

Both quit their day jobs in Geneva this summer and relocated to Brussels to launch a joint initiative to "Make Europe Fit for the Future", as their motto goes.

They launched a "non-profit policy network", which they have dubbed the Lisbon Council, focusing exclusively on competitiveness.

They are now in the process of setting up shop in the Résidence Palace building, located in the heart of the EU quarter on Brussels' bustling Rue de la Loi.

"We want to be to competitiveness what Greenpeace is to the environment," says Mettler.

The dynamic duo have just been joined by a third co-founder, 36-year-old Dutchman Tjark de Lange, a small-business owner who is president of the Young Entrepreneurs of Europe, a network of more than 30,000 business people.

The basic idea behind the Lisbon Council is to get policymakers, businesses and EU citizens alike to focus on the so-called Lisbon Process.

Launched at the 2000 spring EU summit in the Portuguese capital, the Lisbon process aims to make the Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. While often cited by Eurocrats, it is usually greeted by more cynical guffaws than an episode of The Simpsons in the real world.

"The trouble with Lisbon is that people tend to laugh about it, they think it's a joke," admits Hofheinz, an ebullient American who has lived in Europe for 17 years and whose CV includes a stint as an associate editor of Fortune magazine.

"Until now, Lisbon has just been a "wacky Brussels idea". There hasn't been a lot of grass roots movement behind it."

Mettler, Hofheinz and de Lange hope to change that by highlighting bona fide economic success stories and getting those behind them to share the secrets of their success.

"In general, we want to focus a lot on what works and bring it into the news," says Mettler.

"There are real pockets of productivity out there." But, she is quick to add, "we're not a think-tank".

All the literature on Europe's economic woes is already out there, she says.

"We want to translate it for the public, to be an intellectual hub for the kind of Europe we want to be."

To this end, the Lisbon Council is kicking off its "Robert Schuman" lecture series on 9 October with a high-flying speaker - Martin Baily, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to former US president Bill Clinton. The economist will talk about the steps the Clinton administration took to boost productivity, and will use the occasion to introduce his forthcoming book, A Radical Transformation of the European Economy.

But Hofheinz says the Lisbon Council is not going to be about the "US versus the EU", which is a very "primitive" way to view the Lisbon process.

"When the US economy is good, Europe benefits and vice-versa," he says. "We're not interested in where a company is from, we're interested in their economic stake in Europe."

Mettler and Hofheinz, who were recently wed, both say they have no regrets about laying their own hard-earned cash on the line to start up the Lisbon Council.

"The timing is fantastic for this," says Hofheinz. "We think that, next year, competitiveness will be in the limelight, especially with the Irish [rotating EU] presidency - here is a country that turned itself completely around.

"We expect a relaunch of Lisbon under the Irish and Dutch presidencies and are already in consultations with both governments to see how the Lisbon Council can be of assistance."

They are also coordinating a "productivity initiative", which will bring together economists from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Washington's Institute for International Economics, as well as senior economists from companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank.

Mettler, who inherited her entrepreneurial spirit from her German businessman father and her Abba-esque looks from her Swedish mother, says she would like to rouse the "silent majority" who want real economic reform.

"It is a tragedy what has happened in Germany," she says. "There is this acquiescence, this quasi-acceptance of this state which is not acceptable.

"We want to start rallying energy, both within the public and private sectors," adds Hofeinz.

"Because if we are going to get there by 2010, we need to start now."

Ann Mettler, a German political scientist, and Paul Hofheinz, an American former Brussels-based business editor, have launched a joint initiative to 'Make Europe fit for the future' and have joined forces to create a 'non-profit policy network' which they have dubbed the Lisbon Council, concentrating solely on competitiveness.