Regional Analysis of New EU Member States in the Context of Cohesion Policy

The paper concentrates on the new European Union member states, i.e. the states of central and eastern Europe which entered the Union in 2004 (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovenia) and 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania). The basis of the paper is the evaluation of the cohesion policy in the countries in question, which are then analysed at the level of NUTS 2 regions (cohesion regions). The aim of the socioeconomic analysis is to assess the economic level of the regions and to use the results to form their typology. Ten characteristic indicators were chosen so that the study was as complex as possible. For each indicator in the examined countries the average was calculated, which allowed for a considerable increase of the information relevance of the study conclusions. For the cartographic representation of the regional differentiation intervals based on this average and the standard deviation were used. The final part of the study presents a concluding synthesis together with the above-mentioned typology of the regions. The results are interpreted in the context of the optimal strategy selection for the regional policy determined by the EU cohesion policy.