EU executive to adopt 4-pt economic plan

National blueprints aimed at boosting EU economic growth are “limited, inadequate and lacking in ambition”, European business warned on Monday.

A Eurochambres survey of the EU’s national chambers of commerce finds that that business is not impressed with competitiveness commitments made by their governments.

On Wednesday the European commission will assess ‘national reform programmes’ adopted by Europe’s capitals and make four “very concrete” proposals to deliver on higher growth.

But business is not satisfied that governments have been bold enough to make good on economic targets set at a Lisbon EU summit in spring 2000.

“The reform programmes proposed are disappointing. Against an EU economy improving slightly, limited results… and continued progress of our international competitors, the member states should have given a serious and ambitious response,” said Eurochambres President Pierre Simon.

“Instead, what we see is mostly a ‘cutting and pasting’ of existing programmes. We urge governments to be bold in their economic ambitions, if we want to improve the economic situation rapidly and effectively.”

The EU executive’s January 25 assessment of national plans is a bid to move away from a past when hundreds of targets were set at European level but rarely implemented.

Changes follow a 2005 commission review of the five year old ‘Lisbon’ goal of making Europe the world’s most competitive economy by 2010.

Commission President José Manuel Barroso is planning to keep the message simple for governments and to avoid a blizzard of economic targets.

Key, and possibly controversial, to proposals will be calls for measures to make EU labour markets more flexible and adaptable.

Commission officials highlight that a new focus on written pledges of economic reform from national governments will be “much more forceful than in the past”.

The new EU thinking puts member states at the centre of efforts to boost Europe’s economy, recognising the limited scope of Brussels power to enforce economic reform.

All 25 EU capitals have been asked to submit detailed plans spelling out concrete moves to increase competitiveness.

“We can not force them by legal means. It is the member states that have to deliver,” said a commission official.

“At the end of the day it is their responsibility. Maybe in the past the EU has taken too much responsibility.”

The commission will ask EU leaders to hold true to their promises at a March summit and will pull out a few “key actions” to put at the top of the agenda.

EU officials expect governments to give Brussels the green light to ensure member states keep on track with pledges.

The commission will, over the next six to ten months, keep a close eye on how capitals live up to commitments submitted inn October 2005.

“We will have to do very effective monitoring work. This monitoring will have to be very strong. The commission will work very hard on this,” said a commission official.

But in the first year of national reform plans the commission will not indulge in, what some officials describe, as “ranking and spanking”.

“If we feel there are serious shortcomings, we will not shrink from exposing them when we report next year.”

“It is not appropriate to do that at the start of a new process,” said an official.

The commission’s Wednesday report is set to run to over 200 pages: a 20 page political assessment, 50 to 60 pages of detailed breakdown on national programmes, 130 pages on each member state and the eurozone as a whole.

Officials are set to play up the positive with a section on innovative policies to show the “enormous scope for members states to learn from each other”.

“We do not need to look to the US, inspiration is very close to home,” said an official.

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