The European Economic and Social Committee’s Europe 2020 Steering Committee met today. In the picture are EESC President, Staffan Nilsson, and the President of the Steering Committee, Joost van Iersel (Netherlands, Employers’ Group). The Europe 2020 strategy is not just the EU’s best means of guaranteeing its economic and social future – it is the only one, and Staffan Nilsson and the Committee are determined to play their part in making sure it is successful. For it to be a success, though, all parts of our economies and societies must feel, to use a jargon term, ‘ownership’. That is why the Committee has established the steering committee which, following an invitation from European Commission President José Manuel Barroso last autumn, brings together the Committee’s members with representatives from the national economic and social councils in the Member States. On the agenda today were progress in exit strategies from the crisis, coherence between flagship initiatives, responses on innovation, work on the digital agenda, single market aspects and coherence between the national and the EU level.