National Disparities in the European Union: Convergence or Divergence?

Deepening in the European Union (EU) integration process has enhanced the question of economic disparities at all levels. There is a profound differentiation among the EU member states in terms of economic development (the share of the five richest EU countries accounted for 67.7 per cent of total GDP, 61 per cent of all export volume, as well as 58.3 per cent of all inward FDI stock). The disparities among 276 NUTS-2 regions are much higher. In this paper we test the hypotheses of sigma, beta and club convergence presence using the official World Bank data for 2004-2014. The assessment has been based on min-max ratio, quartile and percentile ratio, coefficient of variation as well as Gini index. The goal of the paper is to assess the convergence within the EU, as well as within the EU and six EU-candidate countries. We pose significant problems for the theoretical assumptions of further integration process deepening especially at the expense of less developed Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Turkey or even much poorer countries of the Eastern Partnership.