The priorities must be formulated, as always, in a manner that takes into account both form and content. I shall accordingly deal with both aspects, while placing greater emphasis on the latter. A first priority will be to ensure that the new institutional balance resulting from the Lisbon Treaty can be made to work. The long-term trend clearly entails a steady increase in the power of the European Council, partly because of the presence on the agenda of questions – such as foreign policy or defence – in which sovereignty remains with the member states, and also because it is the locus for coordination of sectoral policies (the Lisbon agenda and, in the future, the 2020 agenda). This trend will continue to be accompanied by a gradual weakening of the Commission, whose role, in some fields, is increasingly to act as scribe in a context of a fluctuating balance of power rather than as the driving institutional and political force prescribed by the Treaty and endorsed by the classic federalists and, frequently, small states. Rather than deplore this situation, it is a question of acknowledging its existence, but it is undoubtedly the case that the establishment of a positive and dynamic equilibrium represents a central challenge for continuing integration. One prerequisite to this end is an appropriate articulation between the community method (including changes brought in by the Lisbon Treaty) and the innovations – whether of methodology or of governance – brought in by the Lisbon process and which were pretty much disregarded in the Nice Treaty revision.

The second challenge – and here I refer to a matter of substance – is to learn lessons not only from the economic crisis but also, and above all, from the environmental crisis. The latter is, in my own view, much more important in that it calls into question, quite naturally, the neoliberal paradigm, but also some of the alternatives for overcoming the crisis that have been proposed by the Left. For this reason, I regard the central challenge to be the debate on post-Lisbon (code name 2020 agenda). It is not a question of contemplating the successes – if any – of the Lisbon 2000 strategy and its highly conspicuous failures, but of moving on and focusing on the components that structured the Lisbon process, so as to conduct debates that are geared to the future.

I would like to refer to two such components. The first is an in-depth reflection on the interactions between different policy fields and their hierarchical relationship to one another; in other words, the effort to find ways of moving beyond a sectoralised approach to the future in favour of the adoption of a holistic vision. This requires selecting the central paradigm in relation to which policies are to be articulated. Lisbon 2000 chose innovation as this paradigm, thus promoting an economic approach propelled by endogenous growth, specialisation in products with strong added value, lifelong learning, and some attention to employment quality. The mid-way change of focus, as it derived from the Kok report and a new left/right balance, placed more emphasis on the market (with the ‘better regulation’ agenda, the services directive, or the Court of Justice judgements in the Viking, Laval, Rueffert and Luxembourg cases) and on employment at any cost (JOBS, JOBS, JOBS). This is, naturally, an oversimplification, and the tensions were indeed more complex, but it serves to give us an idea of how the different elements were positioned.

The second component was governance and the involvement of all stakeholders in an attempt – which indeed proved a failure – at deliberative democracy. A negative effect entailed, from the outset, by this attempt was the marginalisation of the European Parliament and the national parliaments. Even so, the question of the involvement of collective actors in the creation of a transnational public space, over and above the formal rules of elective democracy, has been posed; as has that of the increase in the legitimacy and effectiveness of decisions.

The challenge for the new Commission, the new Parliament and the European Council will be to choose the dominant paradigm around which to organise a vision of the future and to establish to what specific forms of governance pursuit of this vision will entail recourse.

For the time being, in the preparatory documents, the potential candidates – the market, innovation, and sustainable development – are unimaginatively presented as complementary to one another. This is an approach that reproduces the triangle, or the square if a social cohesion dimension is brought in. But what must be avoided is the superimposition of options, in other words, the failure to choose. Let us then consider the advantages of each potential candidate.

Defence of the market as a central paradigm is hardly plausible, even though the results of both European and national elections indicate support for centre-right governments and an intellectual (and political) collapse of social democracy in several countries.

In an attempt to avoid placing the market on the agenda in any direct manner, ‘better regulation’ – recently renamed ‘smart regulation’ – has made a comeback as the hidden face of a market-based ideology. This is a dangerous agenda because it starts out from a claim presented as self-evident, i.e. the need for regulation to be simple in order to arrive at a perverse calling into question of public action, which is always required to offer justification of its added value, whereas the market, whatever its shortcomings, is regarded as a priori more effective. This approach is based on studies that appear not entirely sound or serious, on recourse to doubtful methodologies and on disbursement of extravagant costs (17 million euro). And this is why it is absolutely necessary to conduct a fundamental debate on the underlying causes of the crisis, one that rises above the shortcomings of regulation of the financial sector.

The alternative would be a return to the initial paradigm, that of innovation. However, the coalition that provided support for this preference no longer exists, while the struggle with the United States to become the best performing economy no longer appears particularly relevant as an aim in itself. The innovation paradigm is too limited to be of central relevance in the current situation. Even so, it does constitute a means (rather than an end) in the service of the paradigm that should, according to my own view, be accorded primacy.

The last remaining candidate is thus sustainable development. To date, this issue has produced little more than reams of discourse, including a considerable amount of self-adulating discourse (the so-called success of the Kyoto targets, which is more than doubtful when elements of external flexibility – own development mechanism, joint implementation – are removed). It has also given rise to a range of sectoral policies and forms of product regulation without having been placed at the centre of the exercise to enhance policy coherence. Nor has it been placed at the top of the agenda or selected as the dominant paradigm around which other policies could be articulated.

It would, of course, be possible to set aside this paradigm also, as I set aside the return of the innovation paradigm – on grounds of lack of a majority to support it – not only by making a similar claim about the absence of a political majority but also by referring to the interests of European industry. Such an argument is indeed valid but it is not decisive. The climate question projects us into our grandchildren’s future and hence into choices that require evaluation of short-term versus long-term considerations. These choices only partially reflect left/right preferences. Social democracy is in some quarters still anchored in the paradigm of productivity and ever more productivity, while some employers and moderate or right-wing politicians (whether for personal reasons or with reference to potential markets) support more radical changes in our way of life. Similar divisions apply to the trade unions.

The choice of climate change as an organising paradigm rather than innovation also rests on the belief – or lack of belief – that (technological) progress will prove able and adequate to meet and solve the environmental challenges. This is a complex question that could create shared ground between some employers (in the emerging markets for car batteries, for example) and some sections of the political and trade union left.

For my own part, I believe that innovation and technology constitute only part of the answer. The issue at stake is that a particular type of development, formerly able to serve as a model for the rest of the world, has completely run out of steam. The question is not how Europe might reduce its emissions but how this can be achieved on a global scale, and this gives rise to questions of competition and cooperation. Innovation will be useful only insofar as its fruits are widely disseminated, giving rise to affordable prices and patents, or, if they are better conceived, global public goods.

And so it is to an openly conducted debate on these questions that the new Commission, new Parliament and European Council should devote their efforts. Such a debate will necessarily entail mobilisation of the various instruments currently enshrined in the Treaty (hard regulation, tax harmonisation, structural funds) or developed in the context of the Lisbon process (soft law, convergence, good practices). It will extend also to forms of governance, whether through the classic channel of elective democracy (in relation to the Treaty) or the partially innovative channel of deliberative democracy (in relation to the Lisbon process). A further intellectual challenge will indeed be to reconcile Lisbon qua Treaty with Lisbon qua process.