EU Regional Development Mapped

UNDP’s Human Development Index for 2023 separates Europe’s highest and lowest scorers by nearly 0.2 points. Iceland leads the world. Moldova and Ukraine are near the bottom of the European table. And it didn’t happen by accident.

Forty years of the Iron Curtain kept Eastern Europe out of market economies, foreign investment, and the institutional development that was reshaping the West. Countries that joined the EU in 2004 have been recovering steadily, growing at double the rate of Western members and cutting nearly 30 percentage points off the gap. Poland is the clearest case. Countries outside the EU have had a much harder time making the same progress.

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