Economic Integration in Central Europe. An Evaluation with the CENTROPE Region as a Case in Point

In the period from the enlargement of the European Union to the current economic crisis the CENTROPE region was characterised by a consistently high growth and a clearly improving situation on the labour market. From the economic point of view, however, the region is still poorly integrated. This mainly applies to cross-border labour mobility. The current commuting and migration activities within the region are rather low. In the eastern region of Austria 2.1 percent of the working population come from other CENTROPE countries. Among the CENTROPE regions of the new EU member countries the percentage of the labour force born abroad is highest in the Czech southwest (1.6 percent), and lowest in western Slovakia (0.5 percent). Likewise, there are only border-crossing commuter flows worth mentioning from the Hungarian border region (into Austria), and from the Slovakian border region (to Hungary and the Czech Republic).