Lisbon Reform Programme to Be Aligned with Govt Reform Package
Slovenia will coordinate the national reform package for the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy with the government's reform proposal before it submits the document to the EU. The paper will therefore be sent with a one-week delay on 21 October, according to national Lisbon coordinator Janez Sustersic.
Slovenia will not have three separate strategic documents - the Strategy of Development, the Lisbon reform package and the reform proposals of the government committee for reforms are one and the same thing at the level of implementation, Sustersic said on Thursday as he attended an EU meeting of national Lisbon coordinators.
"The strategy is a general framework covering all key reform areas. The committee for reforms has put forward concrete proposals for actions...We will summarise all that in the national Lisbon programme," he explained.
According to Sustersic, who is also the head of the government Institute for Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (IMAD), the three key priorities of the national Lisbon programme will be competition, social affairs and effective state administration.
Once the European Commission has received all the national reform programmes, it will draw up an implementation report, which is to be confirmed at the EU summit in March.
Sustersic thought that the Commission could play a more significant role in the process. "These may be national programmes, but the Commission can still play the role of coordinator," he said.
According to him, this was a view shared by many participants of the meeting, especially those from smaller EU member states. "Maybe the Commission was too rigid in the past...but what we see now is the other extreme," he said, hopeful that the Commission will eventually become more active.
Sustersic also stressed that it is the member states which will be responsible for implementation. "The best hope for better implementation is that the countries take responsibility and implement the programmes."
This was the first meeting of all 25 national Lisbon coordinators. They were also addressed by European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso and Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry Guenter Verheugen.
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