"Most competitive economy of the world" dashed

‘The Swedish presidency intends to officially announce the failure of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy this autumn,’ Dziennik reports, citing a report from Düsseldorf’s Handelsblatt. The project, endorsed 10 years ago, optimistically aimed for the EU to become the world’s most competitive economy by 2010. Interviewed by the Warsaw paper, Ann Mettler, Executive Director of the Lisbon Council Institute in Brussels, said the agenda had failed because member states had abandoned too quickly its main objective, that is, competitiveness. Instead, they focused on stimulating economic growth, which was to guarantee Europe's prosperity. That change in focus was because few EU countries were able to meet the competitiveness objectives: achieving a 70-percent employment rate and spending 3 percent of GDP on innovation and development.