IMF forecasts that EU's economy to only grow by 5% in 2019-2025.
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On the scale of the entire Community, the losses resulting from the pandemic are to be recovered only after 2022. Worse, the EU's growth prospects are weaker than for the United States and other advanced economies.
As indicated by the Polish Economic Institute, a public think tank subordinate to the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, one of the problems of the European Union is insufficient innovation.
The average expenditure on research and development in the EU oscillates around 2.2 percent of GDP. This is a similar value to that achieved in China, but much lower than in the United States (2.8 percent), Japan (3.2 percent), or South Korea (4.8 percent).
We also observe a clear stratification within Europe itself – between the Nordic countries and the economies of the South and Central and Eastern Europe. While in Germany the total value of outlays is 3.2 percent of GDP, in Poland, Italy and Spain is almost 2 percentage points lower.
According to PIE economists, the lack of consistency is also visible in the case of digital skills. The European Commission conducts a ranking of the digital economy and society showing the availability of broadband internet, the level of computer skills of the society, and the prevalence of e-commerce and digital services. The levels of this index in the Scandinavian countries oscillate around 7,000, in Western Europe 5,500-6,500, and in the countries of the South and East, they usually do not exceed 5,000.
The factor that, according to the PIE, may allow for catching up in weaker regions is the package of recovery of European economies after the pandemic.
