Future economic development and the well-being of citizens in South East Europe (SEE) increasingly depend on greater economic competitiveness. Realising the region’s economic potential requires a holistic, growth-oriented policy approach. Against the backdrop of enhanced European Union (EU) ...

The economic benefits to be gained from investment in public health are increasingly being recognised, as well as its importance for social cohesion, and these objectives play a central role in the European Union's Lisbon agenda. This study seeks to demonstrate the economic importance of the health sector for the countries of south-eastern Europe, by examining trends and patterns of disease burden and socioeconomic inequalities in health, the development of health systems and health policies, as well as options for policy development in order to meet future health challenges in the region.

This paper analyses the impact of large and persistent emigration from Eastern European countries over the past 25 years on these countries’ growth and income convergence to advanced Europe. While emigration has likely benefited migrants themselves, the receiving countries and the EU as a whole, its impact on sending countries’ economies has been largely negative. The analysis suggests that labor outflows, particularly of skilled workers, lowered productivity growth, pushed up wages, and slowed growth and income convergence. At the same time, while remittance inflows supported financial deepening, consumption and investment in some countries, they also reduced incentives to work and led to exchange rate appreciations, eroding competiveness. The departure of the young also added to the fiscal pressures of already aging populations in Eastern Europe. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for sending countries to mitigate the negative impact of emigration on their economies, and the EU-wide initiatives that could support these efforts.

This monograph is about an exciting episode in the intellectual history of Europe: the vigorous debate among leading Polish historians on the sources of the economic development and non-development, including the origins of economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years of this debate between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. Anna Sosnowska provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the notions of post-1945 Polish historians about Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate influenced Western historical sociology, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and the image of Eastern Europe in Western, Marxist-inspired social science. Although created under the adverse conditions of state socialism and censorship, this body of scholarship had an important repercussion in international social science of the post-war period, contributing an emphasis on international comparisons, as well as a stress on social theory and explanations. Sosnowska's analysis also helps to understand current differences that lead to conflicts between Europe's richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries. The historians she studies also investigated analogies between paths in Eastern Europe and regions of West Africa, Latin America and East Asia.

Health is increasingly seen as a robust predictor of economic growth. In the present report the contribution of health to economic development is examined in the context of south-eastern Europe, where the dynamics of health cooperation gained momentum following the Second Ministerial Health Forum co-organized by the Council of Europe Development Bank, the Council of Europe and the WHO Regional Office for Europe, with the special participation of ministers of finance. The report presents the socioeconomic context and the evolution of the health sector. It examines the trends and patterns observable in the areas of disease burden and socioeconomic inequalities in health, and the development of the health systems and policies as well as the way they should evolve in order to meet the future specific health challenges. The report demonstrates the economic importance of health for the countries of south-eastern Europe. Health, as a human capital ingredient, is especially relevant for sustained economic development and social cohesion. These two political objectives figure prominently on the EU agenda and play a central role in the European Union's Lisbon agenda.

The 2020 edition of Health at a Glance: Europe focuses on the impact of the COVID‐19 crisis. Chapter 1 provides an initial assessment of the resilience of European health systems to the COVID-19 pandemic and their ability to contain and respond to the worst pandemic in the past century.

While there may be consensus on the broader issues of the core objectives of the health care system, expectations differ between EU countries, and European national policy-makers. This book seeks firstly to assess the impact of the enlargement process and then to analyse the challenges that lie ahead in the field of health and health policy.