Assessing the Business Environment in the EU-27 : An Overview

This brief is the first in a series of several companion pieces that assess the state of the business environment in 27 European Union (EU27) countries. This series makes use of a fully comparable data source-the World Bank Enterprise Surveys-that measures firms' experiences with and opinions on a variety of obstacles, constraints, enabling policies, and other aspects that comprise the business environment. This brief opens the series by presenting the data and topics that will be explored more in depth by subsequent Briefs. To guide this process, in particular, an assessment is given of firms' expression of their top obstacles. Two such obstacles stand out, overwhelmingly. In 99 of 186 NUTS2-level groupings, an 'inadequately educated workforce' is cited most frequently as the top obstacle, while in 51 such regions 'tax rates' is the most often-cited top obstacle. As it turns out, the regions that cite these different obstacles more frequently vary in notable ways: those citing the workforce-related obstacle are much more likely to be higher-income and have more technologically advanced sectoral profiles. The regions citing tax rates as a top obstacle, by contrast, tend to be lower income and contain lower-technology sectors; they also tend to be located in the periphery of the EU27. Yet while these commonalities across sub-national regions are important, country-level aspects remain important: most regions are more similar to other regions in their country, as opposed to regions with similar characteristics but located elsewhere