Kohútiková, Elena --- "Europe in 2020 Â… globalization challenge and/versus regional responses?" [2003] ELECD 127; in Tumpel-Gugerell, Gertrude; Mooslechner, Peter (eds), "Structural Challenges for Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003)

Book Title: Structural Challenges for Europe

Editor(s): Tumpel-Gugerell, Gertrude; Mooslechner, Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843764748

Section: Chapter 27

Section Title: Europe in 2020 Â… globalization challenge and/versus regional responses?

Author(s): Kohútiková, Elena

Number of pages: 7

Extract:

27. Europe in 2020 ­ globalization
challenge and/versus regional
responses?
Elena Kohútiková

The Lisbon summit in 2000 set a new strategic goal for the European
Union: to turn the EU into the most competitive and most dynamic knowl-
edge-based economy of the world, capable of sustained economic growth
with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. A few months later,
the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in Nice opened
the way for enlarging the EU. Moreover, the Nice IGC, recognizing the
need to improve and monitor the democratic legitimacy and transparency
of the EU institutions in order to bring them closer to citizens, manifested
the EU's ambition to embark on a deeper and wider debate about its future.
In December 2001, the Laeken declaration on `The Future of the European
Union' recognized that the EU will require renewal and reform in order to
become more democratic, more transparent and more efficient. The Laeken
declaration also opened the debate on possible ways to simplify the Union's
instruments and to enhance the transparency of its institutions, including
a possible reorganization of the four EU Treaties across which the objec-
tives, powers and policy instruments of the Union are currently spread.
This debate about the EU's future is expected to help pave the way for the
next IGC in 2004. In order to do this as broadly and as openly as possible,
the European Council decided to convene a Convention composed of the
main parties involved ...