Introduction
The EU 2020 Strategy is the new growth strategy for Europe. Aiming at “smart, inclusive, and sustainable growth”, the strategy has a threefold approach that shall enable the EU to emerge stronger from the economic and financial crisis.
With new priorities and new governance approaches, the EU 2020 Strategy moves beyond its predecessor, the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs, adopted by the European Council in spring 2000. The Lisbon Strategy aimed at turning the EU into “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic area in the world capable of sustainable economic growth and more and better jobs and social cohesion” (Council 2000). The Lisbon Strategy has been criticized in particular for its “lack of focus and of embedding in national policy-making procedures” (Begg 2008: 427). The complicated governance and implementation structure of the Strategy was seen as major reason why several targets could not be fulfilled. Some shortcomings of the Lisbon Strategy were recognized early, which led to the reorientation of the Strategy on the growth and job aspects in 2005 (ibid.: 427). Nevertheless, the EU did not achieve several of the Lisbon targets in 2010, so that the Strategy has often been labeled as “failed” (Tausch 2010).
The EU 2020 Strategy has been designed with the attempt to solve the shortcomings of the Lisbon Strategy so that much attention was given to the governance of the Strategy. After a short evaluation of the Lisbon Strategy, on 3rd March 2010 the Commission presented its Communication on Europe 2020. The President of the European Council, van Rompuy, took leadership in guiding the debate on the new governance of the Strategy.

The Rationale and Implementation Method of EU2020
The EU 2020 strategy is shaped by its triadic overarching approach that consists of three priorities for future growth in the EU: * Smart growth: developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation
 * Sustainable growth: promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy.
 * Inclusive growth: fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion. (COM 2010 b: 3)
The triadic approach is reflected in the targets, integrated guidelines, and flagship initiatives that constitute the EU 2020 Strategy:
Five EU Headline Targets:
Although the EU always speaks of five headline targets, EU 2020 actually has eight targets in five policy areas:

Appraisal: The new target-setting approach has some very positive features but also elementary shortcomings.
The choice of the five areas in which the targets are set is debatable. These areas reflect the overall very broad approach of the strategy.
The translation of the headline targets into national targets probably leads to a high degree of political ownership of the strategy. But the translation of the targets suffers from a major logical shortcoming. The whole approach would have only made sense if it had followed a burden-sharing approach; hence, stronger member states would have committed themselves to overachieving the common targets while weaker member states would have had more flexibility to reach a target that would have been realistic for them. Only then it would have been realistic for the EU to achieve the common headline targets. Now, national targets do not follow burden-sharing (COM 2010 a) so that it is doubtful whether there is enough pressure on member states to perform well enough so that the EU will reach its common targets in 2020. (Wragge 2011)
Ten Integrated Guidelines for Economic Policy and Employment Policy:
The European Council committed itself to ten “Integrated Guidelines”. They consist of six Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPG) and four Employment Guidelines. The Integrated Guidelines are reform orientations for Member States’ economic and employment policies and describe the reform way forward to achieve the EU headline targets. Integrated Guidelines had already been the core of the Lisbon Strategy. The Lisbon Strategy had 24 Guidelines. Thus, with now ten Guidelines, clearer priorities have been set.

Appraisal: With regard to content, the BEPG are target-oriented and appropriate. They describe economically sound orientations including the consolidation of public budgets, the reduction of imbalances, and the improvement of the business environment. But in general, the Guidelines are diluted with generalizations.

The EU 2020 Programme: Seven Flagship Initiatives
The Commission has planned an EU 2020 Programme that consists of seven flagship initiatives, which shall support the achievement of the EU 2020 targets. The flagships can be clustered according to the three thematic priorities:

Appraisal: The overall approach is reasonable as long as the initiatives directly support the achievement of the national and EU headline targets.
The European Semester:
The governance of the Strategy is structured by the European Semester, a new policy cycle as endorsed by the ECOFIN Council on 7 September 2010 in agreement with the European Parliament (ECOFIN 2010). This cycle is one of the first initiatives of the task force on economic governance chaired by Van Rompuy. It will be structured as follows:

The European Semester has three integrated strands: Macro-economic surveillance will focus on the Integrated Guidelines 1-3 and cover macroeconomic and structural policies to address macroeconomic imbalances.

Appraisal: Overall the European Semester is a step in the right direction towards a comprehensive European policy mix (Hacker, Van Treeck 2010: 7).
Although the Strategy has a threefold approach, so far the EU has focused much more on a “market-based understanding of growth” (ibid.). Thus, the thematic coordination strand might fall behind the much more dominant macroeconomic and fiscal surveillance strands. In addition, although several of the EU 2020 elements are labeled as “social” or “inclusive” their contribution to social cohesion and equity is debatable as they rather follow the idea of “social is what creates jobs” (ibid.).
The European Semester strengthens the role of the European Council, which seems to increase both political and public attention.

The Open Method of Co-ordination and Alternatives
The Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) is the major governance and implementation tool of the EU 2020 Strategy.
Background and Rationale:
The European Council officially introduced the OMC in March 2000 after it had been developed in the framework of the European Employment Strategy in the 1990s. It is an alternative governance instrument which consists of four elements:

Appraisal: The OMC has helped to overcome resistance to EU policy making, to identify a common interest and to create a role for the EU in new policy areas (Tholoniat 2010). It has made it easier to overcome important obstacles and constraints and provided a platform to test further EU action (Tholoniat 2010). One of its strengths is that it allows for reforms at different speeds across member states, while they are as the whole moving into one direction. Another positive aspect is that it enables member states to justify unpopular, but necessary reforms for which there is a lack of domestic political support. Moreover, member state governments are more likely to be willing to coordinate their policies on a voluntary and case-by-case basis than irreversibly transferring sovereignty to the EU.
However, several shortcomings can be identified. The OMC faces a so-called “soft-law dilemma”, a need for transparent and predictable frameworks supportive to structural reforms in member states on the one hand and the tendency to add new initiatives to the agenda (Tholoniat, 2010). Moreover, even though peer pressure has had somewhat of an effect, cooperation is voluntary and can ultimately not be enforced which is the major weakness of the OMC.
With regard to legitimacy, the major shortcoming of the OMC is its shallow democratic roots, a lack of transparency and of participation by political and social actors (Hacker/Van Treeck 2010).
Alternatives
In the literature, the OMC is usually debated in the context of the EU Community Method (Zeitlin). The problem with the Community Method is that it requires a transfer of sovereignty to the supranational level. Especially in terms of economic and employment policy, this is highly controversial, as many Member States are not willing to additionally give up sovereignty in these policy areas. Thus, the use of the Community Method as an alternative to the OMC most likely lacks sufficient political consensus. The Regulatory mode has been broadly applied to a range of policy areas that are either primary EU competence or shared competence, but requires similar willingness to transfer sovereignty, although it leaves greater room for variation. The Distributional Mode predominantly applies to the allocation of resources and therefore is not an alternative policy mode to achieve the objectives of the EU 2020 Strategy. However, financial EU instruments such as the European Social Fund, the Research Framework Programme, or lendung by the European Investment Bank should and will probably be used as incentives for reform as already applied by the Lisbon Strategy Programme. Intensive Transgovernmentalism concedes member governments the key role in the policy-making process. Its strength is that it has oftentimes promoted extensive policy collaboration. On the other hand, it is also prone to excluding members from regimes. In the context of EU 2020, this is not desirable.

Conclusion and first outlook on the future EU budget debate
The EU 2020 Strategy has partly learned from the failures of the Lisbon Strategy. It has a clearer focus and provides more targeted implementation methods. The five headline targets set clearer priorities than the complex Lisbon targets. The lacking qualitative dimension of the targets is partly balanced by the Integrated Guidelines. The intention to coordinate economic, social and employment policies and the alignment of the coordination cycles are the major potentials of the EU 2020 Strategy, which can become the basis for a comprehensive EU policy mix.
It is controversial whether the approach moves the EU policy mix into the right direction.