1. LAUNCHING THE 2019 REGIONAL COMPETITIVENESS INDEX RCI 2019
European Week of Regions and Cities
Brussels, 7 October 2019 1

2. The fourth edition of the Index is now available for all EU regions
Measuring the major factors of competitiveness of EU regions at NUTS-2 level over past ten years
Used in past three editions of the Cohesion Report
RCI 2013 was featured in the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report and Eurostat regional yearbook 2014
Today we launch the 2019 edition

3. RCI aims at:
Providing a comparable measure of competitiveness for all EU regions
Helping regions to better target their development strategies and to benchmark themselves with their peers or the rest of the EU
Facilitating exchanges between regions by
Summarising information into an index and its components
Visualising the data in an interactive manner
Providing easy access to underlying data

4. How is the RCI constructed?
RCI is an aggregate statistical measure including 74 basic indicators from official sources, 8 new to this edition, capturing concepts relevant to sustainable development, productivity and well-being
Due to the regional dimension, most of the indicators included in RCI 2019 span the period
UK still included

5. How is RCI constructed?
Basic group
1. Institutions
2. Macroeconomic Stability (country level)
3. Infrastructure
4. Health
5. Basic education (country level)
Efficiency group
6. Higher education
7. Labor Market efficiency
8. Market size
Innovation group
9. Technological readiness
10. Business sophistication
11. Innovation
Basic indicators are grouped into 11 different components and 3 groups gradually moving from enabling factors of competitiveness to cutting edge ones

6. How is RCI constructed?
Basic group
1. Institutions
2. Macroeconomic Stability (country level)
3. Infrastructure
4. Health
5. Basic education (country level)
Efficiency group
6. Higher education
7. Labour Market efficiency
8. Market size
Innovation group
9. Technological readiness
10. Business sophistication
11. Innovation
The index takes into account the economic development of a region by giving more weight to enabling factors of competitiveness in less- developed regions and to cutting-edge factors in more-developed regions

7. Our definition of competitiveness
"The ability of a region to offer an attractive and sustainable environment for firms and residents to live and work"

8. Within-country variability and the role of capitals
Countries with more than two regions only are displayed in the figure

9. Top performers Most include capitals and world class universities
Good connections
Close to markets

10. Bottom performers No capital or large cities No famous universities
Far from markets
Poor connections
Competitiveness levels of outermost regions are only partially captured by RCI due to their specificities and high levels of missing data

11. Monitoring competitiveness: wide and stable gaps
In France, the gap is narrowing slightly due to the combined effect of better performances by the chasing regions and the relative lower performance of the capital region Île-de-France. In Czechia, Praha is the only region registering above the EU average (positive scores) with steadily increasing scores over the years. The gap with the rest of the country is wide and increased in 2013 compared to 2010 but has fallen slightly more recently with the top non-capital regions showing signs of improvement.

12. New, enhanced scorecards

13. New, enhanced scorecards

14. Monitoring competitiveness: relevant changes

15. Monitoring competitiveness: relevant changes

16. RCI is not GDP but can help it grow
The RCI shows so far that:
GDP per head is linked to competitiveness but does not determine it
Regions can do much better or much worse especially for high GDP per capita
On average, higher RCI leads (on average) to more GDP growth and …
… to lower income inequality as well

17. RCI 2019 confirms this trend

18. GDP average growth (2010-2017) for different RCI levels

19. Low competitiveness translates into higher income inequality
Stockholm
London and its commuting belt
Less unequal
More unequal

20. The good recipe for being competitive
Performance of 3 of the top-10 regions
Performance of 3 of the bottom-10 regions
Simultaneous gain in several areas rather than being excellent in just few of them is a key factor

21. NEW: RCI webpage linked to Open Data platform
From the beginning it has been essential that the data behind the RCI is made open to allow regions and researchers to understand and explore the index and benchmark performance
With RCI 2019, we go a step further: A number of the products of the RCI are made available for the first time on the ESI Fund Open Data platform
This will allow users to interact with charts using filters and make time series comparisons with any region of their choice
Open Data charts can be reused by stakeholders on their own websites to make their own analysis or narrative

22. Conclusions
Four points in time available – allows a measure of competitiveness comparable across all the EU regions
A wide range of new interactive tools to facilitate comparisons, monitoring and benchmarking linked to Open Data platform
Shows that neither GDP nor geography are destiny, with large variations of competitiveness at similar levels of GDP or market access
Helps regions improve their development strategies

23. More information RCI webpage:
Open Data platform:
(to be updated with the link to the actual RCI data story – pending)