The European Union summit next week is set to decide that the main policies of the much-maligned Lisbon strategy, which aims to make Europe the world’s most innovative region, should be carried through until 2010.

And why not? Though average growth is sluggish, the EU has created almost 6.5m jobs in the past two years and 5m more are expected by 2009. Average unemployment is expected to fall to below 7 per cent this year, the lowest since the mid-1980s. The Lisbon benchmark of getting 70 per cent of the adult population into work by 2010, which escaped the EU’s recent purge of targets, no longer looks impossible.