Towards a green and innovative economy

This month, the European Commission has launched the Europe 2020 Strategy to go out of the crisis and prepare EU economy for the next decade. The Commission's proposal on a new strategy follows a public consultation that attracted some 1 500 comments.

Europe faces major structural challenges - globalisation, climate change and an ageing population. The economic downturn has made these issues even more pressing. The Lisbon strategy addresses these challenges - aiming to stimulate growth and create more and better jobs, while making the economy greener and more innovative. Before the financial and economic crisis hit the EU, the strategy had helped create more than 18m new jobs. When the economy slumped, the EU acted to stabilise the financial system and adopted a recovery plan to boost demand and restore confidence.

The plan is delivering a major fiscal stimulus, with measures to keep people in work and public investment in infrastructure, innovation, new skills for the workforce, energy efficiency and clean technologies to meet the goals of the Lisbon strategy.

Green economy is one of the four key areas of the strategy, and it can help recovering from the economic crisis with the creation of new "greener" jobs.