The Embassy EU/Economic team enjoys a full dialogue with the Polish government on the range of issues relevant to the Lisbon agenda. This supports the network of contacts in Brussels and between Warsaw and London, and Poland’s efforts to spend its allocation of Structural and Cohesion Funds.

The Lisbon Agenda is a ten-year programme of economic reform to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion by 2010”. In 2005 the focus was narrowed to increasing growth and jobs, with work taken forward under four priorities – knowledge & innovation, jobs, business environment & secure and sustainable energy.

A strengthened commitment to the Lisbon Agenda is a pillar of the UK Government’s EU strategy, as set out in the UK’s policy statement Global Europe. The UK sets out the following key priorities for EU Member States:

• a stable macroeconomic environment;
• an improvement in the conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship;
• embedding better regulation at the national level;
• reforming labour markets.

For this, the EU needs a new approach to the single market, and more proactive use of competition policy.