Transcript Gilles Van Hamme, IGEAT

Europe in the world: a closed economy?
Van Hamme Gilles
IGEAT-ULB
TIGER Project
ESPON meeting Gödölö june 2011
2/25
A competitive Europe in a Globalised World through Research and
Innovation
The call of this session insists on:
« One of the priorities of the Hungarian EU Presidency is to explore how
Europe can advance and strengthen its innovation capacity and become
more competitive in the world.”
Most of economic geographers and policy makers do not even discuss
about this objective. It seems not to be under debate.
 Since this is a major issue for all Europeans and all territories, I believe
that such an objective SHOULD BE UNDER DEBATE. And I try here to
make some points why this debate makes sense.
3/25
Europe is an integrated economy still moderately open
•
•
•
The map shows that EU is the most integrated
international economic area in the world: intra
block trade reaches 43% of total GDP;
EU has an openness rate (ratio extra-EU Trade on
GDP) of 21%, which makes it the closest large
economy in the world after NAFTA;
This rate has significantly increased, also as the
result of POLITICAL DECISIONS (free trade
and investment have been promoted by EU).
Openess
1968
China
CIS
Japan
MERCOSUR
NAFTA
EU
GCC
Openness Openness Openness
1987
1997
2007
6.0
28.5
40.6
54.1
2.0
8.0
29.2
40.8
9.4
15.3
14.7
27.8
11.7
4.2
8.8
64.7
13.5
9.2
14.6
50.6
12.4
11.7
14.1
64.4
22.6
14.6
20.6
76.2
4/25
European regions are not concerned to the same extent by globalization
• The map shows the extra-EU
openness (only exports on GDP) of
European regions around 2008;
• This openness is extremely variable
from 0.2% (Corsica) to 29%
(Flanders);
• Metropolitan areas do not appear
because their role in the global
economy is related to the service
economy (not included on the map)
and their central role in global
networks.