Tania Zgajewski of the European projects in decades. Certainly, it has not had the expected mobilising effect on society. In fact, the basic design of the Lisbon Strategy has always been contradictory. Basically, it arose from a will to make Europe more popular, but the way it was done has not led to success in this. In fact, there was a mistake in the original design, and it has been compounded later by a second mistake in communication. The diagnosis at the basis of the Lisbon Strategy was, in my opinion, quite clever. It stated that the programme of action was unbalanced, and that the communication was worse. The defects of the Lisbon Strategy have, in my opinion, a direct link with the growing unpopularity of the European institutions. This unpopularity was confirmed in 2005 by two negative referendum procedures in two member states traditionally in favour of European integration. Consequently, this presentation has a direct link, not with the way countries can win a referendum, but with the way countries can lose a referendum. The extent of the problem is revealed by the fact that a lot of European politicians precisely do not see this link. To give a proper analysis of the problem, it is necessary to deal progressively with the different aspects of the topic. We shall thus see: a few basic aspects of the present economic problems of the European Union; the outline of the strategy adopted in Lisbon in 2000 and corrected partly in 2005; the results which have been obtained at the level of the European Community and also of the member states; and finally some alternative paths that could be envisaged. THE PROBLEM: THE ECONOMIC SITUATION OF EUROPE The dawn of a new era It is easy, in these times of exacerbated marketing, to overemphasise the changes in our economic system. Nonetheless, one can only be struck by the depth and the scope of these recent changes. Essentially, we face the combination of two phenomena: the information society and globalisation. Their combination tends to increase their repercussions, and accelerate the trend. We are thus entering into a new economic era, largely different from what we have known so far. It is important to have an idea of the scope of this mutation. This is not a revolution, in the sense that our world does not change in one night. On the other hand, it is a permanent pressure, which guarantees very important changes over 58