Regional Convergence in the European Union: A Success Story or an Unaccomplished Goal?

The European integration adventure, treated both as a process and as a state of facts, taking into consideration the deepening or the enlargement, continues to have both advocates and opponents. Although in the early stages of the integration process, the founding countries had similar economic levels, the accession of the Central and Eastern European states has called into question the goal of achieving a sustainable level of cohesion. The main purpose of this paper is to study real convergence in Central and Eastern Europe, by focusing on the NUTS 2 statistical regions. In this respect, we have calculated β- and σ-convergence, illustrating that the poorer regions from the European Union recorded higher GDP growth rates than the developed ones. Moreover, we have examined the industrial specialization in Romania’s regions, trying to identify the existence of appropriate circumstances to create efficient business clusters. In this respect, we have concluded that in seven out of eight NUTS 2 regions, excepting Bucuresti-Ilfov, the main economic activity was manufacturing in 2017. Bucuresti-Ilfov was the only NUTS 2 region from Romania which had a large share of persons employed in other sectors, such as administrative and support service activities and professional, scientific and technical activities. Overall, our study suggests that the Central and Eastern European regions were catching up between 2000 and 2017 and the establishment of industrial clusters had an important contribution in enhancing convergence.