See no agenda, hear no agenda

Richard L. Hudson

Apparently not. In Portugal – where it all began and media attention has been high – the government recently surveyed its citizens: Have you heard about the Lisbon Agenda? Answer: 78 per cent said no. Many thought it had something to do with a development strategy for the city of Lisbon, according to Portuguese officials.

Even among people who follow such issues, the Lisbon Agenda isn’t exactly a winner. At the European Venture Summit, a business conference here Dec 4 and 5, the audience of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and policy makers from around Europe were asked: Do you believe that Europe will, in fact, become the No. 1 knowledge economy by 2010? By about a margin of ten to one, the answer was: No. The US, China, India, perhaps, yes. Anywhere, it seems, but Europe.

So what, exactly, are the politicians talking about? Does it matter?

Of course it does matter. The Lisbon Agenda is about trying to limber up the arthritic economies of Europe – scrapping old regulations that inhibit competition, making it easier to start little technology businesses, improving education, or increasing national investment in R&D. It’s about trying to close the most important economic gap of all, in productivity. US productivity, per hour of labour input, is 15 per cent higher than that in the EU. Productivity per capita is 30 per cent higher, according to a recent report on the Lisbon Agenda by the London School of Economics.

Victory? Depends on how you define it…

But so far, progress has been laughable. Indeed, the commission has twice changed the definition of what victory in this particular war would mean. In 2002 it added a by-now quixotic target of raising average EU spending on R&D to 3 per cent of GDP (from 1.9 per cent now.) In 2005 it started backtracking from that, and instead shifted the focus to a “growth and jobs” strategy that came up with a laundry list of specific regulations that, if changed, would produce economic happiness. Last month, it claimed progress on 75 of the 102 items on its shopping list – though most of them were, in fact, either not yet adopted by the national governments or, if adopted, not terribly ambitious.

Of course, the policy makers are acutely aware of all this. Right now, the Portuguese government is drafting its plans for its next spot in the sunlight – when it will, once again, take over the rotating presidency of the European Union, in the second half of 2007. Carlos Zorrinho, the Portuguese government’s point man on the Lisbon Agenda and the national technology-development plan, called at the conference for “a new cycle of the Lisbon Agenda.” He didn’t define what that will mean, but he got no lack of suggestions from a roundtable of 30 entrepreneurs who gathered in the sidelines of the conference to draft policy recommendations (to be published soon.)

But one of the entrepreneurs present, Declan Ganley of Ireland, put his finger on the fundamental problem. So far, he said, the Lisbon Agenda has been a lot of talk – with few results and, most importantly, no clear idea of who exactly is responsible for translating the talk into action.

“The lack of accountability – that’s the biggest problem with the Lisbon Agenda,” he said. If it fails, “Who do we say has failed?”