The Lisbon Review 2002-2003: An assessment of policies and reforms in Europe

Book abstract:

The Lisbon Review evaluates the ambitious reform programme launched in spring 2000 under the Portuguese EU Presidency and which aims to turn the EU into 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world' by 2010. It analyses the progress made in current EU Member States and compares the results with candidate countries and key non-accession countries, such as Japan, Russia and the United States.

As a group, the candidate countries are far behind the EU. The largest deficiencies are with regard to financial services, sustainable development, innovation and R&D, and liberalisation. Despite the strong efforts to build market economies from scratch and despite the accession process with its emphasis on taking on the acquis communautaire, the Lisbon scores suggest that the accession countries will still suffer from severe competitive disadvantages due to deficient market and regulatory environments. The smallest difference between the accession countries and the EU is in the dimension of enterprise environment, the weakest characteristic of the EU compared to the US.

Behind this bleak picture for the accession country average, however, is a more positive picture that emerges when we consider the three best-performing accession countries in each dimension and compare them to the EU. These countries even receive better 'Lisbon scores' than the EU in several areas: information society, enterprise environment, and social inclusion. The top three accession countries are also almost equal to the EU average in terms of network industries, especially telecommunications. In the latter category only three countries, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, have lower Lisbon scores than Greece, the lowest-rated EU country.

Thus, most candidate countries seem to have upgraded their technologies in this area. In contrast to the EU case, the group of best performers is much more homogeneous in the case of the accession countries. Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary appear consistently among the best three. Importantly, Poland, the largest of the accession countries, never appears among the top three. These results suggest that the leading accession countries will be able to cope quite well with the competitive environment of the EU.