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Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions
1 PURPOSE OF THE COMMUNICATION
Growth and jobs, and the opportunity they create, are at the heart of the European Commission's agenda for Europe. They are essential for economic prosperity, social justice and sustainable development and to equip Europeans for globalisation. They are a core criterion by which citizens will judge whether Europe is delivering results in their daily lives.
In 2005, the renewed Lisbon strategy set out the steps we must take in Europe to deliver growth and jobs. It underlined that an open market with high quality internal rules, effectively enforced, in areas such as competition, innovation, education, research and development, employment, social and cohesion policy is essential in helping European companies compete globally. And it highlighted the need to ensure open markets around the world.
This internal agenda must be complemented with an external agenda for creating opportunity in a globalised economy, encompassing our trade and other external policies. Our external priority in this area in recent years has been to pursue an ambitious, balanced and just multilateral agreement to liberalise international trade further, opening markets in which European companies can compete and providing new opportunities for growth and development. The WTO remains the most effective way of expanding and managing trade in a rules-based system, and a cornerstone of the multilateral system. The Doha Development Agenda remains our first priority and the Commission is working intensively to restart the Doha negotiation after its suspension in July 2006.
Through our trade policies, we also seek to contribute to a range of the Union's external goals, in particular development and neighbourhood objectives. These will remain core functions of EU trade policy. Coherence of the Union's external policies is vital to strengthening the EU's global role.
The purpose of this Communication is to set out the contribution of trade policy to stimulating growth and creating jobs in Europe. It sets out how, in a rapidly changing global economy, we can build a more comprehensive, integrated and forward-looking external trade policy that makes a stronger contribution to Europe's competitiveness. It stresses the need to adapt the tools of EU trade policy to...