The Lisbon Strategy: What is Wrong? ten years. Let's take a look at the information society. In the sector of information and communications technologies(ICT), one has seen an increase in produc­tivity of 400% over ten years. This means that you must either reduce personnel by 75% or keep personnel and increase the volume of production by 400% (which means developing a lot of new products and services). Now let's take a look at globalisation. It has been estimated that the US will outsource 4 million jobs to the developing countries in the next five years. This represents a lot of re­adaptation for a lot of people(OECD, 2005; Levy and Murnane, 2004). One of the strengths of the Lisbon Strategy is precisely its analytical subtlety. It underlines the depth of the present economic mutation, the structural nature of many evolutions. To cope with the challenges that I have just mentioned, we will need a lot of new products, new services and new capabilities. These capabilities are the most crucial element. Without them, we shall not have the new products and services. The present changes rely on short-term and long-term cycles, of course, but also on heavy structural evolution. The solutions cannot be based only on macroeconomic measures. This explains the accent on the emergence of the information economy and the knowledge society. From this point of view, one can only admire the technical preparation of the Lisbon Strategy (Rodrigues, 2003). Two possible presentations This being said, one can only be struck by the darkness of the public commu­nication related to the Lisbon Strategy. Of course, the present economic situation presents challenges. But is the situation so catastrophic? There are permanent gloomy comparisons with the United States. Do we live in such a poor, dependent, arthritic continent? In fact, there are(at least) two ways to present the current reality of Europe. One could imagine the shooting of two movies. One movie has a“black scenario”. The other one has a“pink scenario”. My suggestion is that the reality probably lies in the middle. The black scenario The black scenario can be summarised in a few elements: Old age First, we are becoming a grey society. This is a worrying trend, in the sense that, being demographic, it cannot be corrected for at least a generation. Our European countries are composed of more and more old people for(at least) two reasons: average life expectancy is increasing continuously and average fertility 59