The EU’s never-ending crisis: in 2021 one-third of EU regions with GDP still below pre-2008 levels

Brussels –In Europe, the 2008 crisis never ended. It lingers more than a decade later, especially in those regions of member states struggling to keep up with the rest of the country even before the global financial crisis. Deep wounds are still open, far from being healed. The 9th cohesion policy report of the European Commission focuses on results not achieved rather than those achieved: “All in all, ten years after the 2008 financial crisis, more than a quarter of the EU population still lived in regions where real per capita Gross Domestic Product had not returned to pre-crisis levels.”

​The list of the most distressed countries includes the southern states. The situation “includes the entire population of Greece and Cyprus, 80 percent of the population of Italy.” For Italy, the difficulties in re-emerging from the crisis are concentrated “in the southern regions,” confirming again the structural problems of southern Italy and a north-south gap that has never been bridged and, indeed, has grown.

But it is not only Italy and not only the southern part of Europe that is still suffering from the great crisis. In 2021, “about one-third of the EU’s regions, both the least developed, those in transition, and the most developed, have yet to see a return to 2008 levels of GDP per capita,” the EU Commission’s report says. The situation affects “about 150 million people…primarily in Italy, Spain, Greece, and France, but also of Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.” A substantial slice of the European Union never recovered, and the situation affects everyone, the rich and the poor.

If there were fears that at any time the EU could experience a new financial crisis after the one in 2008 (triggered by Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and reaching Europe the following year), it is clear that the EU has not yet overcome the original one. It has experienced others, such as the 2015 euro crisis, the pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine with its repercussions, but the original one has never really been resolved and overcome. The fault is of long overdue reforms that were never really implemented.

In Italy and elsewhere, “persistent structural challenges: productivity growth, quality of institutions, and well-functioning labor markets” are why we are struggling to return to pre-crisis levels. This is where we need to act to remedy and push for a change in pace to put the 2008 crisis with its aftermath behind us and write a new page for the development of regions. 

“It is important to continue to address the current challenges, such as internal disparities within member states,” Elisa Ferreira, Commissioner for Cohesion and Reform, said. The Commission is available to help States. “We can explore a more simplified programming framework, accelerating implementation and strengthening the ties with reforms,” the commissioner suggested. “This will ensure that cohesion policy continues to promote harmonious territorial development and acts as the glue that holds Europe together.”