The EU and an inescapable sense of urgency

Europe faced the beginning of the century with great optimism. The EU political agenda was on track and the euro, the key European project in the last 20 years, seemed to set the beginning of the final process towards European integration. Overall, the EU seemed to be heading towards a long period of prosperity.

This context provided a key opportunity to close the gap with the US in terms of competitiveness and innovation. In this respect, the European Commission took the important step of launching an ambitious effort in this direction: the Lisbon Agenda, presented two years before the birth of the euro, set the target of the EU to become the most competitive region in 2010.

The program, however, never permeated to EU Member Countries through policy actions and has radically failed to achieve its goals, as several evaluations from the very own EU have stated.