Does EU membership facilitate convergence?
23 March 2021
The video of a recent expert debate hosted by wiiw is now online.
Photo credit: European Union, 2019
The new two-volume publication 'Does EU Membership Facilitate Convergence? The Experience of the EU's Eastern Enlargement' (see vol.1, vol.2) served as an entry points to the discussion. The publication was edited by Michael Landesmann, wiiw Senior Research Associate and former Scientific Director, and István P. Székely, Principal Adviser at the European Commission DG for Economic and Financial Affairs. In the book, the authors analysed how EU membership and candidacy status influenced the convergence process of the Baltic, Central-Eastern and South-Eastern EU member states, and collected contributions by lead researchers in this area.
The event included a panel disussion with Beata Javorcik, EBRD Chief Economist, Debora Revoltella, Chief Economist and Director of the Economics Department of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Jan Svejnar, Director of the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University. During the discussion, the panellists explored the various dimensions of the convergence process, ranging from economic and institutional to social convergence. In addition, they considered how economic convergence could be better translated into social convergence, and how this might be further impacted by the digital and environmental (policy) transitions in a post-COVID world.
Watch the debate here: