They may account for only 5% of the EU’s GDP but the new central and eastern European members, particularly Slovakia and the Baltic states, are setting the pace on economic reform. While they must keep deregulating aggressively to maintain their competitive edge, they are helping to give the EU the liberalising shake-up it sorely needs.
The Brussels summit on March 22-23 marked the halfway point in the EU’s strategy – unveiled with great fanfare in Lisbon in March 2000 – to turn the bloc into the world’s most competitive, knowledge-based economy by 2010. Yet the ostensibly resolute communiqué presented at the end of the summit, calling for a relaunch of the faltering Lisbon agenda and a renewed focus on jobs and growth, belied the EU’s unenthusiastic and, at times, hostile approach to economic reform.
