Data for 2019 published by Eurostat in early March reveals how the most important indicator of the living standards, per capita GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP), has evolved at the regional and national level in the first two decades of this century. The indicator is expressed as a percentage of the European average (EU27).
The numbers reveal that Romania’s per capita GDP has skyrocketed during this period, increasing from 26% percent of the EU average in 2000, to 70% in 2019, a recovery of 40 percentage points.
From this point of view, our country is the champion of all the former socialist states, especially when we consider that in 2000, Romania had the lowest GDP per capita, lower even than that of Bulgaria, which stood at 29% of the European average, and which, by 2019 had only reached 53%. Slovenia was at 81% of the EU average and now stands at 89%, while the Czech Republic stood at 73% and recovered 20 percentage points over the past 20 years. The rest of the former socialist countries were at around 50% of the EU average, and now they are at around 70%, similar to Romania. One exception is Croatia, which joined the European Union later (in 2013), and now stands at only 65% of the EU average.
If at the beginning of the 2000s Romania was the poorest of these former socialist countries, it is now in 5th place after Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, on par with Slovakia, and above Croatia and Bulgaria.
Photo: Bucharest / Pixabay
Translation: Ovidiu Harfas