Economic analysis of emergence of bipolar European Union, 2011-2022

Looking at the economies of the 27 Member States of the European Union, we see a significant degree of polarisation. These disparities are reflected in marked differences in the levels of social and economic development of the EU Member States. The enlargement process of recent decades has clearly reinforced these trends. Generally speaking, the economic performance of the less developed Member States (generally those that joined in 2004 or later) has moved closer to the EU average, but it can also be said that the NUTS 2 regions with the highest levels of underdevelopment are mainly located in these EU Member States, and thus tend to be further away from the EU average. On the basis of these results, we have analysed the bipolar economic development of the EU Member Countries. The aim of our study was to identify the links between employment rates and their changes and economic performance that would provide a comprehensive picture of the deep-rooted structural differences that are nowadays proving to be of crucial importance in the EU Member States. Our results show that employment trends in the EU Member Countries that joined in 2004 or later have caught up with the average of the pre-2004 Member States by 2022, but their economic performance has evolved at a much slower pace, and economic gaps between the two groups of countries have increased, contributing to the almost permanent differences in economic competitiveness between the two poles of Europe and between the groups of countries.