Research

Euro Plus Monitor: September 2017 Update

Europe has entered a new phase, with much hard reform work and austerity behind it. Even France, Europe’s most important laggard, is starting to improve. It could even overtake Germany as Europe’s star performer if the envisaged reforms take hold. Can the Macron agenda turn France into the continent’s economic powerhouse in the next decade? And is the eurozone on the right track? Find answers to these questions in The Euro Plus Monitor September 2017 Update: The Next Stage, the leading economic adjustment ranking, published by Berenberg and the Lisbon Council. Since 2011, The Euro Plus Monitor has tracked the fundamental economic health and recent adjustment progress of the 28 members of the European Union. In this update, we recalculate the previous results from December 2016 based on final data for the full year 2016 and on export and import data for the first half of 2017.  The study was formally launched at the Berenberg European Reform Conference in London.

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A New Framework for Free Movement of Data

How can we make Europe a leader in the global data economy? How can we make sure that the important advances in data analytics – the diseases that will be cured, the traffic congestions alleviated, the social problems correctly analysed – are there for citizens to enjoy and companies and institutions to develop? In this ground-breaking study, the Lisbon Council explores A New Framework for Free Movement of Data in the Digital Age: Making Europe a Data Economy. The paper analyses an array of state-of-the-art proposals for facilitating data flows and proposes a three-point roadmap for improving the “free movement of data” in Europe: adopt “once-only” at the European level; strengthen European-level cyber security and crack down on unjustified data localisation; and develop more open and transparent policies for data sharing around a new concept of “co-ownership.” Paul Hofheinz, president of the Lisbon Council and co-author, formally launched the policy brief at the Presidency of the Council of the European Union conference on the digital single market under the patronage of Jüri Ratas, prime minister of Estonia, and presented the main findings to the Competitiveness and Telecommunication Ministers Council (Informal) in Tallinn, Estonia at the invitation of the Estonian Presidency.
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Leading the Way in Public Service Delivery

In 2016-2017, 12 students from the College of Europe were competitively selected to take part in a project on state transformation. They were divided into three teams of four students. Working together with the Lisbon Council, the College of Europe and Accenture, each team was asked to evaluate a key public-sector challenge in a leading European city.

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The Creative Economy in Europe: Why Human Beings Remain the Economy’s Key Asset

The Lisbon Council and Nesta launch The Creative Economy in Europe: Why Human Beings Remain the Economy’s Key Asset, a hard-hitting new policy brief which highlights the pivotal role of creativity and creative work in the economy. Building on a decade of cutting-edge research at Nesta, the authors – Hasan Bakhshi, Ian Hargreaves and Paul Hofheinz – argue that economic value added is fast becoming less the exclusive domain of complex manufacturing chains built around advanced organisational capabilities, and is found more and more in the “creative” component that human workers bring to their jobs. The policy brief highlights the urgent need for European policymakers to ensure that Europe’s human-capital base is second to none and that its economy is attractive enough to retain its most talented, creative people. It was launched on the eve of Digital Day, a key European Union minister-level meeting taking place in Rome on Thursday, 23 March.

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The 2016 Euro Plus Monitor: Coping with the Backlash

Most erstwhile euro crisis countries have adjusted rapidly and started to feel the first benefits of reform. Economic growth is close to its trend rate of 1.5% in the eurozone and unemployment is falling noticeably. The recovery is more broad-based and better entrenched than before. However, political populism poses a grave threat that could reverse the progress. This is the main finding of The 2016 Euro Plus Monitor: Coping with the Backlash, the much-awaited bi-annual competitiveness ranking published by the Lisbon Council and Berenberg. This year, the study is expanded and updated to cover all 28 European Union member states and includes special chapters on Brexit and the economic risks of populism. It was launched in Brussels at The 2016 Euro Summit.

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Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Opportunity and Challenge

The Lisbon Council publishes Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Opportunity and Challenge, a discussion paper on the future of artificial intelligence. The paper is part of the ongoing Industries of the Future initiative, a multi-disciplinary collaboration led by FTI Consulting, Google and the Lisbon Council. It was prepared by the Lisbon Council for the High-Level Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, where Greg Corrado, senior research scientist at Google and co-leader of Google’s large scale deep neural networks project, delivered the keynote.

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