Territorial Cohesion and the Pandemic in Romania

Convergence and economic and social cohesion remain priorities for the EU, beyond failures to achieve the objectives of the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy. Convergence and territorial cohesion, as a prerequisite for sustainable and durable development, have been the fundamental objectives that generated and developed the strategic planning in the EU, including through the two global strategies, ‘Lisbon’ and ‘Europe 2020’. The sustainability of these processes, even in periods of high economic growth, is questionable since real national convergence is based in many countries, including Romania, on large and widening divergences between regions and counties. In recent years, Romania has seen one of the most enhanced improvements in convergence compared to the EU average, from 60% in 2016 to 69% of the European average in 2019 respectively. During the same period, disparities between regions and counties have deepened. More than 10 years after EU accession and participation in the Community cohesion policy, there is still a third of the counties with less than 70% of the national average of gross domestic product per capita. The health crisis has deeply affected economic activity, but in a differentiated way, depending on the specific territorial economic structures. As a result, the objective of improved and sustainable real convergence, by bringing regions and counties closer together in terms of their level of development, is receding. The economic situation in the counties in 2020 indirectly provides support for assessing the impact of the pandemic on the territorial cohesion process. The implicit conclusion revealed by the latest statistical data is that the level of development has been the support for better resilience to the health crisis. Although the restrictions on international movement and the closure of tourist and industrial capacities have had general validity, the counties with a higher degree of disparity have been more affected.

Testing Real Convergence as a Prerequisite for Long Run Sustainability

The main objective of this research is to estimate the degree of real convergence of the countries that joined the European Union between 2004–2013 as an essential precondition for sustainable accession to the Euro Area. Through this study, we tried to create a clear, real and comparative image for the downward trend in the dispersion of the GDP/capita and the speed by which countries with different integration stages achieve the real economic convergence to equilibrium level. In this respect, we tested real convergence by regression models. Further, in order to verify the robustness of the results we applied a cluster analysis. The main results show that non-Euro Area countries have a tendency to individually reduce income disparities with the Euro Area average, but do not register a convergent economic growth and do not form a homogeneous convergence cluster, unlike the newer Euro Area Member Countries. Another representative result is that the Czech Republic seems to be the best prepared country to adopt the single currency in a sustainable way, while Bulgaria is at the opposite pole.

Nominal, Structural and Real Convergence of the EU Candidate Countries’ Economies

Despite the significant academic interest in the economic cohesion, the various aspects of convergence and the ways they can be measured still remain theoretically unclear. These are issues of extreme political significance, especially for countries aspiring for EU and euro area membership. The goal of this paper is to consolidate a variety of theoretical views on the convergence and its measurement and use it as the basis to assess the progress and the current state of economic convergence to the EU of the four candidate countries. The interrelation between the three forms of convergence in the different phases of the economic cycle is studied and the slobs in the ways the convergence is measured are outlined. The study reveals large differences between the candidate countries in achieving convergence with the EU. Their experiences do not confirm the positive relationship between nominal and real convergence. The structural convergence considered as convergence of sectoral structure has but little impact on the real convergence.

Bulgaria in the Eurozone – Other Countries’ Experience and Comparisons

On July 10 2020 Bulgaria joined the preparatory mechanism for the Eurozone ERM II, but the opinions expressed are still divided. The author’s opinion is that in the debate for or against Bulgaria joining the Eurozone, the actual data provides the strongest arguments. Economic indicators and facts about five former socialist countries that are already in the Eurozone are presented in the paper. There are solid arguments in favor of joining in the analysis of the three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Slovenia and Slovakia. These countries’ development as part of the monetary union and their economic indicators after this important step show their goal for real convergence with developed European economies. The author accepts two issues as especially important – what happens to inflation in these economies after joining the Eurozone and what the comparison concerning real convergence shows. Croatia, along with Bulgaria, has become a part of ERM II and the Banking Union, hence why it is also included in the analysis.

Does Poland’s Economy Meet the Criteria of Real Convergence with the Euro Area?

EU catching up countries, which operate in a monetary union with highly developed countries, recorded good economic results until the 2008+ crisis. However, their resistance to the economic recession turned out to be much lower than that of the economically stronger countries (except Poland).

50 Years of Real Convergence – Without Extractives Dependency and Tax Havens

In the world economy real convergence cannot be detected in the long term and lack of convergence is discussed in this article. The analysis is based on results and debates of economic growth theory and development studies. Special focus is placed on extractives dependent and tax haven countries and the article concludes that these countries considerably contribute to the partial real convergence process, limited only to some regions of the world economy. This paper also studies some common criteria of the catching-up process of emerging countries to developed economies. It concludes that although the factors of catching-up can be very unique in countries at different levels of development, yet there are some factors without which catching-up is hardly feasible nowadays in any country.