Spatial patterns of regional regional inequalities in European Union in pandemic time. Empirical evidence from NUTS-2 regions

The outbreak of COVID-19 has induced economic and financial disruptions to global economies, consistent with those experienced during previous episodes of economic or financial crises. This article offers a global perspective into the spread of the virus by investigating the convergence patterns of COVID-19 across 242 regions NUTS 2 in European Union, in period 2019 - 2022. The analysis presents regional imbalances evaluated by statistical techniques and methods that can reflect the evolution concerning the main economic aspects. Using the Gini coefficient for the last four years we demonstrated there was a slow convergence process in the NUTS 2 regions interrupted by the pandemic global crisis. Also, the evolution of the GDP per capita in PPS at regional level in the case of all the Member States for the 1997-2021 was analyzed in order to show the intensity between the crises. The pandemic crisis was also compared to the economic crisis (2008-2009) which demonstrated that the COVID-19 didn’t have the same impact as the financial one, pandemic had the lower intensity.