Resilience inequalities in the European Union countries

Abstract

The aim of the article is to identify groups of European Union countries characterized by a similar level of economic resilience in the period of numerous crisis situations and to identify the relationship between the level of economic resilience and the level of economic development, with particular emphasis on the situation in Poland. The hypothesis is that Poland is characterized by weak economic resilience, and the level of economic resilience’s EU countries is correlated with the level of economic development. The subject scope of the study concerns the level of economic resilience and the level of economic development. The subjective scope of the study covered the EU countries, excluding Luxembourg and Malta, within the year 2021. The article uses literature analysis and
a statistical research method. Each country of the EU has a different level of economic resilience. The highest level of economic resilience is found in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Poland belongs to the group of countries with the lowest level of resilience, but it is slightly higher in the case of aspects related to educational and financial resilience. Less resilient countries, such as Poland, may therefore find it more difficult to adapt to the European Commission's policy direction. The level of economic development of countries is strongly positively correlated with the level of their economic resilience (excluding the outlier observation – Ireland – the Pearson correlation coefficient between the economic resilience index and GDP per capita in PPP for 2021 was 0.883).