Introducing the Lisbon Strategy and the OMC

Abstract

For several decades it was expected that the Western-type welfare state would do away with poverty, and indeed until the 1980s this was an observable tendency in the member states of the EU. Since, however, poverty figures have been on the rise again (Kowalsky 1999: 52), and many have been speaking of “new poverty”, addressing not only income poverty but also urban decline and violence, ethnic minorities, homelessness, young unemployed, rural poverty, handicapped, single parents or elderly people. In 1975 there were estimated 38 million poor in the EU (CEC 1980). Twenty years later the number had risen to 55 million, and in 2005 the EU counted 75 million poor. Since the mid-1970s the EU addressed these “new” forms of poverty in the form of poverty programmes which, in the context of absent EU competences, attempted to promote analysis, network-building, exchange of information and mutual learning (Kröger 2007a; Rojas 1999). With such a programme approach, the Commission tried to influence national and European debates and policy development. The programmes consisted of small budgets, exchange of information, data collecting and improvement, enhancing mutual learning. They addressed a small policy community of academia, NGOs and politicians. These activities, however, came to a preliminary halt in 1996 when the United Kingdom and Germany went to the European Court of Justice to stop the implementation of a fourth programme.