Turk: People and Environment Key to Slovenia's Lisbon Vision
Slovenia will help shape Europe's global role in the future, drafting key documents of the Lisbon Strategy and paying attention to people and environment, Development Minister Ziga Turk said on Tuesday after his first visit to Brussels as the national coordinator for the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy. Slovenia has a unique opportunity to contribute its own thinking to the vision of future Europe, said Turk, adding that its vision during the EU presidency in 2008 would stress care for people and the environment.
Slovenia and Portugal will shape the new three-year period of the Lisbon Strategy side by side, said Turk. Under Portugal's presidency, most of the strategic guidelines will be drafted, while Slovenia will take charge of wrapping up the final key documents.
"The Lisbon Strategy is a plan to modernise Europe," said Turk. "I think Europe admitted that sheer competition with the US and Asia is not what Europeans are interested in. They are interested in the European quality of life, which has always existed."
In Slovenia, the debate around the strategy is only beginning. Slovenia will take a concrete standpoint on Lisbon by September, when all national coordinators meet in Brussels to draft the basis for the upcoming three-year period, he explained.
EU member states appoint national Lisbon coordinators based on the decision of the 2005 EU summit at which they made the commitment to improve internal coordination in the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy.
Turk was appointed Slovenian national Lisbon coordinator, or Mr. Lisbon, in the beginning of April, replacing Janez Sustersic, the head of the Institute for Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, who was the national coordinator from September 2005.
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