The EU Enlargement Process and Social Convergence : A Working Paper on Globalization and Growing Inequality in the Old and the New Europe

The publication surveys the major existing evidence from EUROSTAT and UN/World Bank sources and comes to the depressing conclusion that there is practically no real convergence of social conditions in Europe over the last years. Instead, the gaps between East and West, and between South and North tend to be permanent. A large number of poverty indicators is analysed. The analysis bodes ill for the aims of the Union to become, by 2010, the world's leading market. The analysis is especially pessimistic for the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria and Romania. The publication surveys also the latest evidence on Roma poverty and Roma discrimination in the region