07 Mar
Ukraine’s EU accession: Opportunity for Europe, major test for KyivUkraine is striving for European Union membership, aiming to open additional negotiation clusters this year. Experts argue that its accession could not only strengthen Central and Eastern Europe but also drive reforms within the EU itself. By Aleksandra Krzysztoszek, Euractiv.pl Read more |
The European Union, as the rest of the world, is facing an unprecedented healthcare challenge. The EU has been widely criticized for its slow initial reaction to the developing pandemic and, then, the slow vaccine roll-out in the bloc, seeing the Union lag behind the US, the UK or Israel in the immunization of the population.
Since shocks cannot be avoided and are likely to occur more frequently in the future, it is crucial to strengthen economic resilience – “the ability of a country to withstand a shock and recover quickly to its potential [growth] after it falls into recession” – on national and regional levels.
The most often raised issue with SMEs in Hungary is that they are lagging behind larger firms and their western rivals in terms of productivity, which is the added value produced by a worker in a given timeframe. The low productivity, in turn, holds the entire Hungarian economy back.
Digital disruption is happening: further enhanced by the Covid-19 crisis on the social, political and economic levels, EU member states, and V4 countries among them, are rushing to keep up with competitors and level the global playing field. The EU27 need to keep in sight the necessity to maintain focus on cohesion.