2016 Regional Competitiveness Index
The European Commission published the 2016 edition of its Regional Competitiveness Index. The index, prepared for the third time in history, presents detailed information on the development of all regions in the European Union. The results of the research is published every three years.
The European Commission analysed available data on 263 EU regions. The study concerns not only economic status and GDP growth, but takes a more comprehensive look into the areas having impact on the development of EU member states. Among the factors taking into consideration when building the index are health, infrastructure, labour market efficiency, technological readiness or business sophistication, in other words: “the key basic drivers of all types of economies”, as the Commission calls them in the press release published on Monday.
All things concerned, Poland was ranked 16 out of the 28 EU member states. In our country, as well as the rest of Eastern Europe, the results did not vary much from those published in the previous report, published three years ago. The top scorers, on the national level, were Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Creators of the RCI see it as a useful tool that may help shape development and highlights the areas countries may want to improve on.
As far as Poland is concerned, the region which received the highest scores is Mazowieckie. It was ranged on the 150th position among 263 EU regions assessed in total. The region of Poland with the lowest score is Warmińsko-Mazurskie (215th). Compared with the EU average, Poland got good marks for basic education, macroeconomic stability and higher education and lifelong learning. The country’s weak areas are infrastructure, technological readiness and business sophistication.
The regions with the highest development index are situated in the north and centre of Europe (UK, the Netherlands, Sweeden. The regions with the lowest scores are located in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and south of Italy.
