Europe 2020

In a time where the recession is hitting every land in the EU, we have seen employment rates decrease. However, one of EU’s main goals of the Europe 2020 strategy is to maintain at 75%. In 2010, the rate was at 68%. Today, there are 23 million unemployed people throughout the 27 EU countries.

There are a number of transformations the EU is planning to step up within the next few years. They want to provide the right people with the right education, holding the right skills for future labour, and also improve the working conditions for people throughout EU countries. Another transformation the EU plans to put forward is to make it easier for entrepreneurs to develop to result in the ability to create more jobs for more people in the future.

Another main part of the agenda for the Europe 2020 is to lower poverty. The task is to reduce poverty by at least 25%, but this has proven to be one of the hardest tasks of the strategy. It has also been mentioned that some politicians have used different indicators to define the number of people actually living in poverty and this makes it harder for Europe to work towards the goal.

One of the strategies will help to redistribute the wealth and means in the EU area and therefore reduce inequality and reform some of the Eastern European countries, as many households there have only one person working. There is not yet proof that these strategies work, possibly due to the election of the European Parliament coming up in 2014 and politicians may not want to make unpopular announcements.

The EU also takes on board the importance of technological dependency and creates policies to underpin research and development and innovations, to create awareness of renewable energy and most importantly to create climate for changes.

According to EuroStat (2011), the EU’s production of primary energy in 2009 was 818 Mtoe which was 48% of its energy needs. Denmark is the only country in the EU that produces considerably more than enough energy than they need. It is the only net energy exporter in the EU. In the opposite direction is Malta who has total dependency on imports.

Russia is the EU’s biggest energy supplier. The EU created the Energy Charter Treaty with the main aim to arrange cooperation between energy rich Asia and poor Europe, in which both sides have interest. Russia’s economic strength depends on the export of gas and oil for higher prices. Russia’s largest market and biggest buyer of energy is the EU. Therefore, Russia aims to increase their share in supplying energy in Europe. However, the EU does not want to depend on Russia or let Russia monopolise the market.

In 1994, Russia refused to approve an agreement in the parliament and pushed the EU to think about their future energy policy. In addition, people became more aware about the importance of sustainable development and nature conservation, another reason for the new energy policy, also known as “Energy 2020: competitive, sustainable and secure energy”. This policy focused on an internal energy market with quality service at low prices and on supporting development of renewable energy.

One of the ways to reach these goals was by establishing European Institute of Technology (EIT) in 2008. Through KIC-innoenergy it supports innovation project in seven different areas such as Clean coal technologies, Intelligent energy-efficient buildings and cities and Renewable energy.

The Europe 2020 strategy has specific plans for countries and the union as a whole, to make sure they reach their strategic goals. Even the EU is one of the largest and most successful trade organisations in the modern time, great challenges stand before this union to beat the recession and to yet again work their way to protect the well-being of the European Union citizens.