Does the Lisbon Strategy Matter: the Czech Experience  Czech civil servants are not trained and experienced in dealing with strategic issues in their professional life;  Czech politicians in general do not appreciate the importance of strategic thinking and decision making for the realisation of their political missions. As a result, the real impact of OMC in governance at the national level has been dramatically below its potential influence. In other words, operative and tactical tasks, short-term interests, lack of time and professional blindness severely limit the effects of the OMC's application. At the same time, clear positive effects can be recognised in raising the level of general awareness of civil servants about EU problems. Genuine national programmatic initiative An interesting example of an original national initiative was the elaboration of The Social Doctrine of the Czech Republic(Sociální doktrína České republiky, 2002). Its aim was to build a broad national consensus concerning the future orientation, goals, priorities and corresponding instruments of Czech social policy. Five preparatory conferences in 1998-2000 were a“joint venture” of the academic community concentrated around the non-profit Socioklub, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the Senate(the upper house of the Czech Parliament). The document, elaborated by a group of experts from various fields and with various political affiliations, got mentioned in the coalition agreement statement of political parties in power in July 2002, as the starting point for the further development of government social policy and its priorities and approaches for the period till 2006. Nevertheless, until its resignation in 2004, the government failed to find sufficient capacity and motivation for consequent steps: real social policy decisions mostly stemmed from either urgent problems or strong demands articulated by various pressure groups. CHANGING PUBLIC POLICIES What has been the specific impact of this interplay of various influences on specific policy fields in the Czech Republic? Social inclusion The European Commission has asked all the candidate countries' governments to elaborate Joint Inclusion Memoranda in order to identify key problems and 139