Correctly Finger-Pointing the Lisbon-Process-Villains

21 Pages Posted: 29 Mar 2007

See all articles by Arno Tausch

Arno Tausch

University of the Free State, Department of Political Studies and Governance; University of Innsbruck - Department of Political Science

Date Written: March 2007

Abstract

The European Union's center-piece of economic policy making is the Lisbon process, which tries to make Europe the most competitive economic region in the world economy by 2010. EU-Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso recently presented a Centre for European Reform (CER) study that maintained that Denmark, Sweden and Austria are the best performing Lisbon process countries for 2005 and that Romania, Poland and Malta are the lowest ranked countries in the European Union in the same year. Due to lacking data, practically no serious conclusions can be drawn about Turkey. In the study, presented by the Commission President, some real finger pointing is made, with the "good" performers being called "heroes" and the "bad performers" being called "villains". In the study, Poland was made the European chief "villain" (henceforth called, in keeping with this tendency towards abbreviations in the eurocracy, the ECV, for 2005). Our rigorous re-analysis of the data leads us to the conclusion that the ECV, i.e. the country characterized by past bad cumulated performance, and having no real prospect of things getting better is not Poland but Portugal. It emerges once again that the Lisbon process is in a dire state of affairs.

Keywords: European Union, Lisbon process, Index numbers, IR and international political economy

JEL Classification: F15, O4, C43, F5

Suggested Citation

Tausch, Arno, Correctly Finger-Pointing the Lisbon-Process-Villains (March 2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=976610 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.976610

Arno Tausch (Contact Author)

University of the Free State, Department of Political Studies and Governance ( email )

205 Nelson Mandela Drive
Park West
Bloemfontein, Free State 9300
South Africa

University of Innsbruck - Department of Political Science ( email )

Universitätsstrasse 15
Innsbruck, Tirol 6020
Austria

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