Euro-lefties confront reality.

Can Europe overcome the burden of its socialist heritage? There are some hopeful signs.

The Times reports:

THE European Union has abandoned its target of becoming the world’s most dynamic economy by the end of the decade, and instead adopted as its next “big project” a less ambitious programme aimed at cutting the Continent’s massive unemployment.

The European Commission’s new economic strategy, which promotes deregulation and free markets, draws heavily on the experience of Britain, the EU’s most successful large economy. It marks a sharp change of tack for the Commission, the EU’s executive body, which previously put more priority on social protection, as demanded by countries such as France and Germany.

The Commission has also avoided adopting any more grandiose projects that build up the European project — such as single currency or enlargement — putting the emphasis instead on the down-to-earth practicalities of getting the right policies to cure the EU’s economic malaise.

The Commission believes that the economy has to be put at the top of the agenda because it fears that high unemployment is fuelling public dis- illusionment with the EU, and could derail the plan to adopt the European constitution.

Welcome to the real world.

FOLLOWUP:

Speaking at the University Club in Washington yesterday, Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca, recently elected VP of the EU, spoke bluntly about Europe's recent economic record which has lagged far behind that of its major trading partners. The "Lisbon Strategy," forged in 2000, which aimed at making Europe the world's largest information-based economy by 2010, is failing.

Roca blamed part of the problem on international conditions, especially the price of oil, and acknowledged some structural defects in the Lisbon Stategy, claiming that its goals were too ambitious and had to be scaled down. He also blamed political opposition in some member countries that had watered down or blocked needed reforms. Finally, he blamed the European peoples themselves. "We are lazy, to say it simply," he said. Of course, Roca chose not to place any real blame on the EU commissioners themselves and rejected claims by member nations that EU regulations were stifling economic growth.

Read the whole thing here.

Sounds as though they really haven't learned much from their failures. Maybe things aren't as hopeful as I had thought.