From Maastricht to Lisbon: EU Strategy in the Global Knowledge Economy

rom the 1960s to the 1980s, regional integration served as an economic strategy for the European community: the enlarged market made it possible to build bigger factories, streamline production and increase productivity. Integration yielded the most benefits for the industries in which the major European countries specialized, such as chemicals and automobiles. At the end of the 1980s, the project of the single market was both the culmination of this strategy and the start of a turning-point. Subsequently, the finalization of the single market made it possible to not only develop economies of scale but also stimulate competition on markets for goods and services. At the same time, the European Commission started to develop a European policy of support for research. At the end of the 1990s, the growth gap with the United States and the European countries’ disappointing track record with the new technologies provided proof that integration no longer sufficed as a strategy. The new challenge was to generate new industrial and service activities, a goal at least as important as increasing productivity in existing activities. Accordingly, the Lisbon agenda mapped out in 2000 was designed to reinforce the twin pillars of an innovation-based growth strategy: greater investment in knowledg