EU denounces dismal economic record
THE European Commission rebuked Britain and the EU’s other member state governments yesterday for failing to keep their bold promises of economic reform.
One year after the Lisbon meeting agreed to make the EU the world’s most competitive economic area by 2010, and a month after unproductive follow-up talks in Stockholm, the Commission decried the gap between the leaders’ rhetoric and reality and demanded swift action to counter the global economic slowdown. Of 36 measures to improve the workings of the single market, the Commission believes that only 20, or 55 per cent, will be achieved by the agreed target date of June.
“It is particularly disappointing to see such poor performance in the first year since the Lisbon strategy was agreed,” Frits Bolkestein, the Internal Market Commissioner, said. “This shows the commitments made at European summits are not always translated into concrete action. A gap exists between rhetoric and reality.”
A specific example cited in the Commission’s report is the EU’s failure to open up its postal services — a measure on which Britain is stalling in order to protect rural post offices.
A government spokesman last night rejected that criticism, arguing that Britain was legitimately awaiting a report from its new postal services regulator in June.
The report says that only three of the 15 member states — Denmark, Sweden and Finland — have met the target for implementing EU legislation governing the single market at national level.
