Greece and Italy named 'villains' of EU reform agenda

by Lucia Kubosova


Published in on the EU Observer website, 4 March 2008

Austria, the Netherlands and Estonia last year achieved the greatest progress towards economic reform targets in the EU, according to a fresh scoreboard by a centre-right London-based think-tank, the Centre for European Reform.

Meanwhile, the report, published on Monday (3 February) names Italy and Greece as "villains" of the reform agenda for scoring poorly in most priority areas, along with Malta, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

The analysis, titled "The Lisbon Scoreboard VIII", is based on a comparison of the 27 EU member states' performances in key areas listed under the bloc's 2000 Lisbon strategy, aimed at boosting the EU's competitiveness.

As in the previous year, the 2008 table is led by Denmark and Sweden, with both countries scoring highly in fields related to social equity, labour market performance and environmental sustainability, as well as innovation.

However, due to Denmark's weak growth in GDP per capita since 2000 - stronger at the EU level only if compared to Italy and Portugal - and due to Sweden's high youth unemployment rate, the two Scandinavian countries are not highlighted as this year's "heroes".

Instead, Austria, ranking third, and the Netherlands, ranking fourth, are praised as the countries which have done most to improve their economic performance, with Vienna particularly strong in fighting red tape and boosting employment rates.

"The Netherlands is in many respects the EU's most successful economy," argue the authors of the report, referring to its "unique" combination of high levels of productivity with a high employment rate, as well as the country's wealth - the third highest in the EU after Luxembourg and Ireland.

Estonia comes out as the best performer of the member states joining the bloc in 2004, after it rose by four places in 2007 to eleventh place in the scoreboard, mainly thanks to "extremely rapid growth in per capita GDP since 2000" and Tallinn's efforts to improve the functioning of its labour market and business environment.

Britain still performs best out of Europe's five biggest economies. The UK, France Germany, Italy and Spain together account for around 75 percent of the bloc's GDP. But London has nonetheless somewhat worsened its ranking, with both Germany and France moving up the table, following reforms of their labour markets.

By contrast, Italy features as one of the bloc's worst laggards. "In 1997, the country was wealthier than France and the UK, but by 2007 it had fallen a long way behind both of them," in terms of per capita GDP, the authors of the study noted.

"Italy is going to have to raise its game to avoid a further decline in its relative prosperity within the EU. It scores poorly on just about every indicator, ranking 23rd overall," they write.

Rome is joined by Athens as the two western European capitals most harshly criticised in the report, with Greece classed as a "villain" more times than any other country across various indicators.

"Greeks are slow to adopt new technologies, and shortcomings in the education system mean that this is unlikely to change soon. Greek governments have consistently been among the slowest in the EU to liberalise product markets, and the country has one of the least favourable regulatory environments for business in the EU."