The Lisbon Strategy: What is Wrong? Third, an effort should be made to increase the EC budget. We must put our money where our mouth is(ICT, networks, environment, and corporate restructuring). We thus need to increase the EC budget but with new priorities. From that point of view, the financial perspectives adopted for 2007-2013 by the European Council hesitate between the scandalous and the ridiculous. The sacrifice of research spending is nonsense. In 2003, the Sapir Report, ordered by the Prodi Commission proposed a strong reorientation of the EU budget. This was meant to increase significantly the outlays for employment, networks, training and research. This should have been accompanied by an increase of global outlays. Fourth, member states must have environmental and social targets(softer thus than regulations) in order to fight the fear of change. I come back to my original point. People will get involved into EU programmes if they feel they have an interest. In 2005 two objectives were abandoned for the sake of concentration on more efficiency. I did not see where the efficiency argument was at that time. I certainly do not see it now in the results. The subsidiary argument Some people could say here that such a programme of action(the solution for more integration) would violate the subsidiary principle. It is an important argument, and it is necessary to deal with it. As we know, the subsidiary principle is enshrined into Article 3.b of the EC Treaty. It concerns the exercise of shared(meaning not exclusive) competences by the European Community. It requires proving that an EC initiative will be more efficient than a national initiative. Concerning the first element of a more integrated strategy, we could say that energy taxation and better infrastructure costs have already been proposed by the Commission and discussed by the member states. It was not said that it was against the subsidiary principle. There was a disagreement between the member states regarding the best level of taxation. In fact, because of the single market, the only way of having such measures adopted is precisely to adopt them at the EC level. If we do not, we create distortions of concurrence between the transport companies. I could be more detailed about the challenges created by the strong rise of oil prices during the last two years and the absolute necessity of a common answer from the EC, but there is on space. 69