The Europe 2020 strategy

The Europe 2020 strategy lays the foundations for “smart, sustainable and inclusive” growth for the decade to come. Alongside this, a three-pronged monitoring mechanism – incorporating fiscal, macroeconomic and thematic surveillance – has been put in place to coordinate and supervise policies. It is in the context of the thematic analysis that the commitments made by Member States in favour of the Europe 2020 strategy are examined and their progress measured. The national reform programmes filed each year with the European Commission effectively contain the conversion of the five key European targets – with regard to employment, innovation, education, sustainable development and social inclusion – into national objectives and also the steps that the countries are intending to implement in order to advance along these different paths. The new model of governance – still in progress – was implemented for the first time in 2011, during what has been named the European Semester. The impetus was provided by the Annual Growth Survey carried out in January by the European Commission, which served as a basis for the endorsement of the priorities for fiscal consolidation and structural reforms by the European Council meeting held in the spring. In April, the Member States compiled their national reform programme and their stability or convergence programme. The Commission examined them in May and the European Council approved specific recommendations to each country in June, with the aim of strengthening the cohesion of the national policies planned in the budgets that are to be adopted by Member Sates during the following months, referred to as the National Semester. The mobilisation of countries in favour of the Europe 2020 strategy is proving insufficient in a certain number of fields. As far as the labour market is concerned, assuming that the commitments made by the Member States are honoured, the European strategic target of arriving at an overall employment rate of 75 % by 2020 would not be achieved, since there would be a shortfall of at least 1 percentage point. In the field of research and innovation, the share of GDP taken up by gross domestic expenditure on R&D would remain below the 3 % targeted by the EU. With regard to energy, sharing the effort between the Member States should ensure the achievement of the objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (by 20 % compared to the level of 1990) and raising the share of renewable energy (to reach 20 % of final consumption of energy in 2020) contained in the climate and energy package. Energy efficiency should in turn grow by 20 % within the EU ; however, the efforts set out in the national reform programmes are not directly comparable between the countries. The education targets aimed at lowering the school drop-out rate to a level below 10 % and increasing the share of persons between 30 and 34 years of age with tertiary education to at least 40 % would not be honoured either. Lastly, with regard to social cohesion, the Member States are free to choose their national objectives on the basis of the indicators that they deem most appropriate depending on their own situation, in order to make their contribution to the European target of reducing the number of persons at risk of poverty and/or social exclusion by at least 20 million between now and 2020.