REGIONAL COOPERATION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

PART I:
basic requirements of competitiveness at a higher relative level, among them Bulgaria has
the most even performance in terms of the different factors of competitiveness. Romania
is relatively better in efficiency factors, while Croatia does so in terms of innovation. The
drawing factor of East Central European countries competitiveness is rather efficiency
than the basic factors, only the Czech Republic and Slovenia shows a relative innovation
advantage.
In terms of economic freedom (Graph 2) the countries of the research on average show a
better relative performance than in competitiveness, even if most belong to the catching
up or falling behind category on OECD basis. The East Central European countries are at
the entrance of the higher middle layer, but what is worth noting that Bulgaria reaches the
middle layer, Romania and Macedonia are very close to it and Croatia shows a relatively
low performance. It is also remarkable that the overall freedom performances are the
results of very heterogeneous characteristics of different types of freedom. One of the
leading features of transition seems to be the relatively high reduction in the size of the
state sector, mostly in Romania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the case
of Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia the overextension of the government size must be one
of the main withdrawing factors. Another characteristic of the general picture is that while
the reduction of the state sector as well as liberalisation of labour market are relatively far
ahead in the Balkan countries, the freedom from corruption is still a serious task to tackle,
as well as liberalisation does not go along with a low level of administrative and financial
bottlenecks when starting a business.
Environmental issues (Graph 3) show a quite different picture. Croatia, Slovakia and
Romania reach the higher middle layer; Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary and Poland
perform at the lower level of the middle part, while, mostly relative to the overall state of
development, Bulgaria and Macedonia show a much better environmental performance
than Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Among the countries in the research either the
reduction of environmental stresses or the human factor or both play the leading role.
According to the international surveys and comparisons it is Poland, Croatia and Slovakia
that take mostly into account the global aspects in terms of environment.
The human factor (Graph 4) of sustainability is measured by the Human Development
Index, which in all cases perform in the lower or higher middle categories or very
close to them. The differences among the countries are also smaller than in the case of
competitiveness or economic freedom. The structure of the human factor is quite a
divergent picture, however. Life expectancy indexes are the most even as expected.
In terms of education the differences are much higher; however, the GDP performance
polarises the countries most. It seems that the Balkan and East Central European countries
are better developed in terms of human factors than economically-technically, which offers
a better chance to catch up. In the case of Slovakia, Czech Republic and partly Croatia
the three factors of human development are quite even, while Slovenia, Poland, Hungary,
Romania and Bulgaria take an education drawn path.
It is also worth analysing the relative total performances of different fields from a country’s
point of view. There is no place here to give an overview of all countries analysed but there
are two of the Balkan examples, which look as follows.
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