"EU governments are taking increasingly unorthodox measures to prevent the economic crisis from overwhelming their economies. They are right to intervene, but their policies must not undermine Europe's long-term economic growth prospects in the process. The Lisbon scorecard IX argues that the financial crisis should not be used as an excuse to go slow on economic reform. The European Commission needs to resist what is likely to be ferocious lobbying for a dilution of competition policy and state aid rules. A retreat from the liberalising agenda of recent years would cause as much damage to the European economy in the long term as the financial crisis is doing in the short term."

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