engleski

Testing of macroeconomic capacities on NUTS III level - Croatia case

Joining the EU for Croatia means adapting a whole range of new procedures and rules. Although, up to the 2013, Croatia had access to pre-accession funds, joining the EU means greater potential access to EU funds, that remain one of the key elements for successful cohesion process. EU membership will reveal the full extent of the activities that the governments made in the accession process to strengthen its macroeconomic, financial and administrative absorption capacity. It should be noted that all „new“ member countries during the first years of membership had relatively poor absorption of available resources and administrative capacity has proven to be most problematic in the implementation of EU funded projects. Statistical monitoring the absorption of EU funds is inconsistent and subject to different interpretations, while Croatia is sometimes even cited as an example of the country with the high absorption rate of the available funds. This creates an unfavorable environment for proper research, because of the unreliable statistical basis. However, available data on the absorption of EU funds provide only a rough picture of reality. This paper seeks to explore factors that have impact on the number of successful applications for EU funds on NUTS III level. Standard regression model is used in order to explore impact of exogenous variables like GDP per capita level, level of unemployment, industrial production, etc. on the number of projects approved.

EU funds, absorption, NUTS III

nije evidentirano