FAMO – Monitoring of Skilled Workers. Regular Assessment on the Supply of and Demand for Skilled Workers in the Border Region Between Austria and Slovakia. FAMO I: Economic Development in the CENTROPE Region since EU Enlargement

This report investigates the economic development since the EU enlargement in 2004 in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia with a particular focus on the CENTROPE region. It also includes a literature review of ex-ante and ex-post assessments of the EU enlargement of 2004. We try to evaluate whether there have been significant growth accelerations and whether there have been problems on the labour markets in subregions of CENTROPE. The macroeconomic analysis shows that there was high growth and a considerable improvement in the labour market situation in the period between enlargement and the year 2008. As a consequence, the catching-up process of those parts of the CENTROPE region which belong to the new EU member countries continued and was partly even accelerated. However, the CENTROPE region is still less economically integrated than other cross-border regions of the EU, in particular concerning cross-border labour mobility. This is probably due to the transition periods until labour markets are fully opened, as shown by an analysis of migration and commuting patterns. All the economic policy makers of the CENTROPE region now face the same common problem of overcoming the global economic crisis which hit all of the CENTROPE economies at the end of 2008.