The European Semester and the Competitiveness of the Southern EU Member States and the Visegrad States
The European Semester and the Competitiveness of the Southern EU Member States and the Visegrad States

Summary/Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of building competitiveness through implementing the European Semester’s country specific recommendations (CSRs) in the V4 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and the southern eurozone states (Portugal, Spain and Italy). As far as the V4 are concerned, they experienced large and persistent external imbalances (i.e., measured by the magnitude of the balance of payments deficit) until the beginning of the crisis, as with the Mediterranean EU Member States. This points at some similar structural problems that affect their competitiveness. Later, among the V4, the imbalances were in Poland and Czech Republic only.

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