CROSSING THE CHASM FROM DIVERGENCE TO CONVERGENCE IN AN ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

European Union is still considered a unique economic and political actor that has challenged the principles of economic integration in the last half a century. With the advancement of the integration process and the accession of the countries from Central and Eastern Europe, decision makers and academic community have been interested in studying if the desiderate of economic convergence can be achieved in an enlarged European Union. Although initially, researchers focused their attention on countries, it seems that more and more studies aim the evolution of convergence between regions. The main purpose of this paper is to study convergence between regions at NUTS 2 level by taking into consideration two determinants: GDP per capita and disposable income of households. In order to capture the economic landscape of the European Union, we have used the neoclassical growth model concepts - sigma- and beta-convergence - and we have structured the regions depending on the geographic location in three main clusters: North-Western, Southern and Central and Eastern Europe. The results of our paper suggest that the regions from Central and Eastern Europe experienced a significant speed of catching up in terms of GDP per capita and households' disposable income between 2000 and 2016. In contrast, the regions from North-Western and Southern Europe recorded modest economic performances. Overall, the results of our research suggest that although the objective of convergence has not been achieved so far, the Central and Eastern European regions have been made significant progress in terms of catching up.