Knowledge-Based Society

Knowledge-Based Economy

Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over many centuries? but recently the pace has dramatically increased. Jet airplanes? cheap telephone service? email? computers? huge ocean going vessels? instant capital flows? all these have formed the world more interdependent than ever. The Lisbon European Council draws up a strategy for boosting employment in the EU, modernizing the economy and strengthening social cohesion in a knowledge-based Europe.

Knowledge Based Theory (Lisbon Meeting Concept)

The European Council held a special meeting on 23-24 March 2000 in Lisbon to agree a new strategic goal for the Union in order to strengthen employment, economic reform and social cohesion as part of a knowledge-based economy. At the beginning of procedures, a switch of perspectives was carried on with the President of the European Parliament, Mrs. Nicole Fontaine, on the principal topics for discussion.  The speedy and quickening pace of change entails it is pressing for the Union to act now to tackle the full advantages of the chances confronted. Hence the need for the Union to set a clear strategic goal and agree a challenging programme for building knowledge infrastructures, enhancing innovation and economic reform, and modernizing social welfare and education systems.

Europe's education and training systems need to adapt both to the demands of the knowledge community and to the need for an enhanced level and quality of employment. They would have to extend learning and training chances tailored to target groups at diverse stages of their lives: young people, unemployed people and those in employment who are at danger of assuring their accomplishments caught up with by rapid change. This new approach must have three primary components: the development of local learning centers, the promotion of new basic skills, in peculiar in the information technologies, and increased transparency of qualifications.

The European Council asks the Council (Education) to undertake a general reflection on the concrete future objectives of education systems, focusing on common concerns and priorities while respecting national diversity, with a view to contributing to the Luxembourg and Cardiff processes and presenting a broader report to the European Council in the spring of 2001.

In peculiar, the European Council invites the Council and the Commission to: 

encourage a better understanding of social exclusion by continued dialogue and exchanges of information and best practice, on the basis of commonly agreed indicators; the High Level Working Party on Social Protection will be involved in establishing these indicators; 

mainstream the promotion of inclusion in Member States' employment, education and training, health and housing policies, this being complemented at Community level by action under the Structural Funds within the present budgetary framework; 

Develop priority actions addressed to specific target groups (for example minority groups, children, the elderly and the disabled), with Member States choosing amongst those actions according to their peculiar situations and reporting subsequently on their implementation. 

It will depend on mobilizing the resources available on the markets, as well as on efforts by Member States. The Union's role is to act as a catalyst in this process, by establishing an effective framework for mobilizing all available resources for the transition to the knowledge-based economy and by adding its own contribution to this effort under existing Community policies while respecting Agenda ...