Relatrice
Paola Annoni
Chief Statistician, Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission
Abstrac
How competitive is your region? The EU Regional Competitiveness Index (RCI) can tell you all. Launched in 2010 and published by the European Commission every three years, the RCI allows regions to monitor and assess their competitiveness level over time and in comparison with other similar regions.
Regional competitiveness is defined as the ability of a region to offer an attractive and sustainable environment for firms and residents to live and work. The RCI, that builds on the Global Competitiveness Index by the World Economic Forum, is the only measure providing a comparable European perspective on regional competitiveness. It is an aggregate index including more than 70 basic indicators split into 11 dimensions.
Results show a polycentric pattern with strong capital and metropolitan areas as major drivers of competitiveness. Spillover effects can be seen in most of north-western Europe, but this is much less obvious in the EU regions to the east and south. High levels of within-country variation are observed in many cases which are often caused by a clearly outperforming capital region compared to the other regions in the country, but there are some relevant exceptions.
The novelty of the latest edition is the interactive web tool, which allows for a more detailed analysis and comparison of each region, either with its peers in terms of GDP per capita or with the rest of the EU. Users may now easily see how their region performs in terms of innovation, governance, transport, digital infrastructure, health or human capital.
The RCI is meant to reinforce the Commission's effort to encourage structural reforms and boost the innovation capacities of EU regions, also via cohesion policy investments. Because each region is unique, the Commission should provide tailor-made support to empower them and help them capitalise on their strengths and assets.
The seminar will provide most of the statistical, and often hidden, details employed for the construction of the index.
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Organizzazione
Elisabetta Carfagna
Cinzia Viroli