"To set a good example for the other member states, Slovenia undertakes to ratify the Lisbon Treaty in the early 2008": this is one of the five priorities that the presidency of the EU Council, currently in the hands of the Ljubljana government, included in its six months’ plan. Slovenia will be the president of the European Union for the first six months of this year: the agenda drawn up by the Prime Minister, Janez Jansa, and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dimitrij Rupel (17 pages in the official draft in Slovenian language), was agreed with the previous German and Portuguese presidencies and in relation to the French one, which Paris will take on in the second half of the year. The second decisive item on the six months’ agenda concerns "the launch of the new cycle of the Lisbon Strategy" at the mid-March summit: in order to support growth and employment, the presidency thinks that "a strict implementation of the national reform plans" is essential. According to Jansa, "the main areas of the strategy that best respond to the challenges that Europe is called to face are: research, knowledge and innovation, the development of a competitive commercial scenario, the adaptation of the job market, the response to the demographic challenges". (continued)
