Leading British and Czech economists met at Prague Castle last week for another in a series of conferences about the future of Europe - what it has to offer the world, how it is affected by migration and the impact of European integration, among other things. Last week's conference was called Can Europe sharpen its blunt competitive edge and it presented another platform to the much debated Lisbon agenda aimed at raising the EU's competitiveness by 2010. Keith Didcock, deputy director of the Foreign Policy Centre in London tells Daniela Lazarova about the conclusions reached in the course of the two day panel debate.
"Europe needs to look outwards much more and it needs to do so because of several factors which are harming its competitive ability. The first of those is demographic decline, an aging population, lowering fertility rates, which means that, overall, European populations are going to shrink in the future and we are suggesting that Europe needs to improve its ability to attract immigrants in order to boost its population and boost its productivity. We are also suggesting that Europe needs to create an ivy league of elite universities because it is very clear that European universities are not in the top fifty -overall -and Europe really needs to tackle the quality of its higher education system. Thirdly, Europe needs to promote the liberalization of world trade because that is the best route towards improving Europe's economic competitiveness and to do that it needs to reform the common agricultural policy. And finally we would like to see the Euro being turned into the world's reserve currency. It can challenge the dollar and become the most widely held reserve currency in the world and also the currency of international trade. "
This will necessitate a lot of decisions and reforms on which there will have to be consensus. Do you feel that the EU's expansion to 25 states will harm this process of improving Europe's competitiveness?
Photo: European Commission
"No, because I think that the four areas I just outlined are not areas where there is a great deal of difference of opinion or national politics which are likely to intervene. I think that one of the problems that Europe has had competitively in the past is that the comparative economic advantage of one member state against another has often been a stumbling block towards actually improving competitiveness. But if we are calling for Europe to produce an ivy league of universities there's really no reason why that should fall foul of national politics. It should be an EU-wide aspiration and it is something that I think European governments can and ought to work together to promote."
Does that mean you are also in favour of faster integration?
"Obviously closer European integration will help - in many areas and it is going to be very difficult I think to have Europe promoting the liberalization of world trade and championing that cause if there are major differences of approach between the member states. That is a political issue and needs to be tackled at the political level. I don't see that in the long term Europe can allow that to be an impediment to fostering its competitive ability. "
