Europe 2020: Let them eat words

Richard L. Hudson, Editor.

For those who missed it, on March 3 the European Commission released a fairly concise report outlining its vision for Europe over the next decade.

Remember, this is from the same people who, at the turn of the new Millennium, grandly announced a 10-year vision called the Lisbon Strategy – to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world, with full employment, by 2010. They doubled the rhetorical bet in 2002 with a further pledge to double Europe’s R&D spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product. Fairy tales, all (R&D spending, for instance, is still stuck below 1.9 per cent, and 31 per cent of those between ages 20 and 64 are not working.) So it is with considerable scepticism that we read  the latest set of New  Decade’s resolutions.

First, a straight summary. The Commission proposes to the EU governments (subject to confirmation this Spring) a 10-year strategy to achieve “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.”  Translation: more innovation, more green policies, and a rise in employment and education across the EU. It will achieve this through setting five targets, and proposing seven ‘flagship’ programmes (three goals, five targets, seven programmes; the Commission has a Medieval fascination with numerology.)

For those interested in research and innovation, the highlights:

• A target: “3 per cent of the EU’s GDP should be invested in R&D.” (Yes, same goal as before.)

• A target: “At least 40 per cent of the younger generation should have a tertiary degree.”

• A flagship programme:  An ‘Innovation Union’ to “improve framework conditions and access to finance for research and innovation so as to ensure that innovative ideas can be turned into products and services that create growth and jobs.”

• Other flagship programmes: ‘Youth on the move“ to improve education and promote student mobility across EU university systems, and a ‘Digital agenda’ to expand the broadband network and the use of ICT.

Now, the first point to note is that it’s all good politics. As you read the document, you see a nod to every possible constituency in the EU – green and not-so-green, socialist labour and doctrinaire liberal. There’s something for everyone.

The second point is that it bears the marks of hasty, last-minute rewriting – testimony to the stress of political compromise. The English version, while generally well-written, is replete with instances of missing or duplicated words that speak of many hands making many changes in the last few hours before publication.

Third, in the policy field of innovation and research, it manages to include nearly every buzzword in town – making it a kind of politically correct echo chamber of received wisdom about what Europe needs to do. ‘Mobility,’ ‘modernisation agenda of higher education’. ‘foster excellence and smart specialisation’, and ‘knowledge partnerships’ are a few popular phrases. For students of this field, it also has some interesting nuances: it proposes European Innovation Partnerships between Brussels and the Member States that sound suspiciously like a new term for a bad old term, Joint Programming (resisted so far by many EU members). And solving the Grand Challenges (capitalised) that the Commission had previously been considering as the aim of EU R&D has gone lower-case and more diffuse (there are apparently more grand challenges to solve than Grand Challenges.)

If this begins to sound like silly literary criticism, that should come as no surprise: in the end, this report is just words. They’re very nice words, to be sure. But they have no meaning in the absence of agreement among the EU members about how, exactly, they are to be converted into law. By trying to throw a linguistic bone to every constituency in Europe, the Commission risks having the opposite effect from its intention: alienating, rather than pleasing, all. In politics, especially during a recession, you simply cannot please all of the people all of the time. Judging from the initial bad reviews from think tanks, pundits and press, it sounds like Europe 2020 pleases none of the people none of the time.

Rather than trying to peddle grand and inclusive visions, the Commission would serve Europe better with simple actions, well-designed programmes and efficiently managed projects. The unemployed cannot eat words.