Sounding More Soviet by the Minute

Despite rapidly running out of capitols to name pompous, unrealistic declarations after, the EU is running headlong into a theatrical form of central planning philosophy that I like to call “mining the scrapheap of history” in an attempt to look like their doing something definite about the public’s economic malaise woes.

The next few months will be decisive for the European Union's future economic health, with the bloc set to agree a new 10-year economic plan in a bid to leave the recent recession behind, and chart a fresh course towards steady growth and job creation.

and the paean to the Rubber chicken internal summitry circuit MUST go on:

Memory of the EU's current economic plan - the Lisbon Strategy, due to expire in 2010 - is also likely to influence EU leaders as they prepare to discuss its successor at a number of European summits over the next six months under the Spanish EU presidency.

If 5 year plans never worked, how is a 10 year plan supposed to work? By giving one even more time to create a few months of diminished expectations before the whole PR exercise is forgotten?

Unaknowleged, even while admitting to the failure of the Lisbon Strategy to “make the union the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world", is that innovation takes place when governments are not staring at private innovators, tapping their toes, fondling their mobiles, and checking their watches.