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Regional Development Report 2010: Post Crisis Perspectives and Future Challenges
The 2010 Regional Development Report, elaborated by a four-country transnational research consortium and soon to be released, will provide a valuable overview of major economic developments in the region especially with regards to the consequences of the current economic crisis. Preliminary results show clearly that the CENTROPE partner regions have guarded their strong economic potential even in a post-crisis context and are expected to grow substantially more than the European Union on average.
Preliminary results of the regional development monitoring to be fully released at the May 5th CENTROPE summit in Györ hint that most of the regions of CENTROPE seem to have proved their resilience in the context of economic crisis and have rapidly emerged from recession. Predictions also show that these parts of CENTROPE will most probably continue to grow in the future. The real motors of growth in the region still are the Slovak parts of CENTROPE, the Bratislava and the Trnava regions, which appear to be doing very well in the wake of the crisis and will probably grow extensively in the future.
Facing new challenges for a prosperous region.
Moreover, the crisis has played an important role in the identification of the needs in future cooperation and common policies in CENTROPE. The overall economic difficulties of the partner regions as well as the different impacts of the crisis on their economic situation have shown some new challenges in the field of cooperation of the partner regions as well as common policy-making. These challenges need to be faced in order to further harmonize the economic as well as socio-demographic situation in the partner regions and create a comparative advantage for CENTROPE as a whole. Politicians and other decision-makers will have to discuss, based on RDR figures, how to diversify the industrial structure so as to prevent future cyclical risks as much as possible, how to foster the knowledge economy as one of the basic pillars of a healthy economy and, last but not least, how to conduct an integrated and active labour market policy in order to prevent brain drain, support cross-country labour mobility and reduce unemployment.
All in all, despite the regional differences, the CENTROPE region has emerged from the crisis more rapidly than expected. Its overall potential for future growth has also shown to be more than encouraging and it is likely to be superior to the average of the European Union. From this point of view, the policy lessons – as will be suggested by the Regional Development Report – as well as an extensive cooperation among the partner regions may enable this potential for growth to unfold as much as possible.
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