ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and analyses the new strategy for economic growth in Europe, the so called European Union (EU) 2020-strategy. The European Union has always been about the creation of an integrated market in Europe. The EU has gradually begun to look like a state, but it is a state with a dominant purpose, to create an integrated European market. Sweden in particular is a country which has moved away from corporatism and even tried to become a financial marketplace of the north. The Varieties of Capitalism-perspective can help us understand why the member states want different things and why EU regulation is implemented differently and has different effects in the various member states of the EU. The Lisbon Treaty is the latest of about a dozen major and minor revisions of the original Treaty of Rome. The flagship initiative on Innovation Union sounds more like the creation of a pan-European policy.
