The regional dimension to the Lisbon Process
Prof. Andrew Scott University of Edinburgh, School of Law Old College Edinburgh EH10 4HX United Kingdom andrew.scott@ed.ac.uk The regional dimension to the Lisbon Process. The central argument developed in the presentation is that the governance of the Lisbon Strategy lacks a structured "regional dimension", and that this omission is a major weakness of the entire process. The resulting weakness is twofold. First, as a matter of achieving the substantive Lisbon objectives within the economic pillar, the absence of a structured regional dimension risks excluding from the strategy a range of sub-state governments, administrations and economic stakeholders responsible for devising and delivering those economic policies 'locally' which will shape the overall rate of growth of output and employment across the EU. Socio-economic development actually occurs at the local level, yet there is no EU-wide discussion on the best-practice approach to including local economic play