Overall, the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century were marked by a lagging economy where Portugal not only failed to catch up to the EU average, but actually fell behind for a period. The Common Agriculture Policy, a system of European Union agricultural subsidies and programmes, ultimately enforced a ban on agriculture in areas where agriculture had traditionally been done, ensuring that Portugal could not be self-sufficient in a number of competitive products. Public expenditure rose to unsustainable levels and the number of public servants, which had been on the rise since the 1974 Carnation Revolution, reached unprecedented proportions. State-funded and supported construction projects such as those related to the Expo 98 World Fair in Lisbon, the 2004 European Football Championship, and a number of new motorways, proved to have little positive effect in fostering sustainable growth. The short-term impact of these major investments was exhausted by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and the aim of achieving faster economic growth and the improvement of the population's purchasing power in relation to the EU average did not materialize. To make matters worse, the late 2000s recession, when much of the industrialized world entered a deep recession, led to increased unemployment and a downturn.