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4th European Meeting of People Experiencing Poverty:
“The most important thing is to take part” The outstanding innovation of the 4th Meeting is to have opened up the dialogue between the “ambassadors” of people experiencing poverty and “invited guests”, the key contacts at official and decision-making levels.
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16th GA – Liverpool (UK):
“Delivering the Social Inclusion Agenda – From Promise to Reality.”
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Revision of the Lisbon Strategy:
Between April and November 2004, Wim KoK (former Netherlands Prime-Minister) headed up a review of the program and presented a report on the Lisbon strategy concluding that even if some progress was made, most of the goals were not achieved due to the following arguments: “European Union and its Member States have clearly themselves contributed to slow progress by failing to act on much of the Lisbon strategy with sufficient urgency. This disappointing delivery is due to an overloaded agenda, poor coordination and conflicting priorities. Still, a key issue has been the lack of determined political action.” The European Commission used this report as a basis for its proposal in February 2005 to refocus the Lisbon Agenda on actions that promote growth and jobs in a manner that is fully consistent with the objective of sustainable development. The Commission’s communication stated that “making growth and jobs the immediate target goes hand in hand with promoting social or environmental objectives In its resolution on the midterm review of the Lisbon strategy in March 2005, the European Parliament expressed its belief that “sustainable growth and employment are Europe’s most pressing goals and underpin social and environmental progress” and “that well-designed social and environmental policies are themselves key elements in strengthening Europe’s economic performance”. However this was not enough to put the Lisbon Strategy back on the track. Some member states continue the Lisbon Process, namely with the National Action Plans until 2010, but the majority totally abandoned the process with huge impact for most of the EAPN members who saw the few advances rolled back
