The adoption of Lisbon Strategy proves that European Commission and Council realised the importance of innovation. Lisbon Strategy: a) aimed at achieving very ambition target – developing the European economy to the most technologically advanced region in the world, b) especially, the amended version of the Strategy – Europe 2020, was the guideline for the programming of structural fund, which in turn aimed at increasing the social-economic cohesion among the regions and countries, c) should not be analized in separation of single market regulation (competition policy), state aid aquis and the rules of fiscal and monetary stability. The optimisic belief, that the less developed countries can grow faster and catch up the leaders due to intense technical progress, arised from the neoclassical theory of growth based on the aggregate production function. But neither statistical data nor heterodox theory of growth supports this belief. In post-keynesian models the demand side of the open economy must regard the Thirlwall’s law. The balance of payments influence the technology through the Verdoorn-Kaldor law. Basically, this is the reason of uneven development among the member states: in European Union there is “club” consist of countries with high income and high technology but the rest tends to create a group with income lower than average. This supports the Quah’s divergence hypothesis. It seems that the european regulations and policies, including cohesion policy, are not sufficient to counter the negative consequences of common market. Economic integration calls for demand policy (i.e. another distribution of income), especially – investment and industrial policy in the Southern and Eastern Europe.