Titanic 2010? : The European Union & its Failed Lisbon Strategy

Titanic 2010 is around the corner: Is Eastern Europe really catching up with the West, and is the enlarged and transformed Europe really on its way to become, by 1010, the most competitive region in the world economy? Starting from the seven "cardinal sins" of the transformation process, described by Harvard Professor Janos Kornai. it is evident that the real income of a significant proportion of the population has remained unchanged, or even deteriorated in Eastern Europe, that a dramatic ''restructuring'' has taken place in the area of income distribution, that the employment rate has significantly declined, public security deteriorating, corruption has not ended, and that there are disorders in the political arena with tax policies favouring the rich. Dissatisfaction with the "Lisbon process" of the European Union, Initiated at the European Council meeting in Liston, March, 2000, to make Europe the most competitive economy of the world by 2010, is widespread also in Western Europe, relevant optimistic recent voices from the Commission notwithstanding. So instead of achieving unity and harmony, Europe is drifting towards "transnational integration and national disintegration" (Osvaldo Sunkel). Schumpeter and later world system and dependency writers were always of the crises, cyclical imbalances, regional shifts, and of the rise and decline of entire regions and even continents in the process of capitalist development. At the end of the day. a realistic and politically useful analysis of the "Lisbon process" has to be "Schumpeterian" in its question writing.