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The new European commission had so a new double task. The first part of this mission was bringing back the sense of Europe, the sense of mission and translating it in a practical action; the second part was the most difficult one, the most complicated one, just because we hade to discuss all the decision-making aspects of the different European institutions: the member States’ role, the Commission’s role, the organization model and, considering a new organization in the way of working, a reform of the structure and of the way of working of the Commission itself, i.e. the government and esecutive organ of Europe. This firstly meant riveting the priorities in the field of policy and organizing the Commission’s work in order to achieve the political goals we aimed at. Among these goals, the main one in ‘99/2000 was that of the economic growth, exposed to a risk by the fragmentation of Europe itself. Then Lisbon summit took place, where we insisted on a precise concept: in ten years, within 2010, Europe must become the centre, the landmark for world renewal. Europe, the great old continent where science, technology, modernity were born, surpassed by USA, attempted by the New World, had to come back to the top of modernity and innovation. Lisbon summit, found great agreements and happiness, let’s say, in imposing this new euphoria means, but warning, in a moment when many partecipating countries didn’t want to put together this means in order to achieve this goals. That is, on one hand they said “we have to become the landmark for world innovation, but on the other hand there were troubles in putting the resources together and troubles in finding out new decision-making process, among the diffwerent countries. Infact the “Benchmarking”(which means comparison) method overcame in Lisbon summit; it said: we do not fix any compulsory rule in the different countries behaviour, we do not fix obligatory goals, let’s just say that anyone should follow the most virtuous country’s exemple. It’s understood that this approach has evident limits and indeed it wasn’t enough to wake Europe up. And here we have a great contraddiction that was corn in Lisbon: very high-sounding goals on one hand, an evolving Commission, which strenghten in order to achieve this goals, but the member States which don’t grant neither resources, nor decision-making reforms needed to achieve them. This is the great contraddiction Europe lived in during these years, from which we didn’t go out yet, and which we have to exit in the future.
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