REGIONAL INTEGRATION AGREEMENTS AND REAL ECONOMIC CONVERGENCE: LESSONS FROM THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Over the last fifty years, the European regional integration project has become increasingly complex and has counted on an increasingly number of member-countries which are very different from the structural point of view. The article sought to evaluate the effects of this audacious project on socioeconomic inequalities pre-existing between these countries. The analysis of selected indicators showed that there were evidences of real economic convergence between 1993 and 2008. However, the European crisis represented a shift in this trend. It is argued that the creation of common policies and institutions in order to assist countries that are lagging behind to overcome the structures which characterize underdevelopment certainly contributed to this process. This is the case of the European Union’s regional or cohesion policy. Nevertheless, the macroeconomic framework to which the European countries were submitted in recent years considerably restricted its ability to stimulate the growth of output, income and employment, therefore imposing important limits to the process of convergence between them.