Release of State of the Region Report 2008

- The crisis will hit the Region hard but there is reason to believe that most parts of the Region will weather the storm better than many peer regions. Underlying competitiveness remains high and a combination of solid public finances, room for maneuver in monetary policy, and effectively quite flexible labor markets provide the majority of the Region with the right arsenal to return to growth sooner, said Ketels.

The short-term actions taken to address the immediate crisis will be much more effective, if they are imbedded in a longer-term growth strategy that the markets can trust. This is why the focus on competitiveness, inherently a medium- to long-term approach, remains highly important in a time like this. And this is why collaboration in the Baltic Sea Region, an important tool of an effective competitiveness agenda for each country in the Region, remains a necessity even now.

The up-coming EU Baltic Sea Region strategy is already creating benefits by keeping the countries in the Region engaged in collaboration, even when current events in many places push towards a focus on domestic issues and national solutions. If the strategy turns out to become a leveraging point for the integration of EU, national, and local efforts for competitiveness, it can become much more: It can become a role model for European integration in the post-Lisbon Treaty era.

The State of the Region Report, drawing on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, is written by Dr Christian Ketels, Principal Associate at Professor Michael E. Porter’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School. Over the years, it has become a respected benchmarking tool regarding competitiveness, economic performance and prosperity in Northern Europe. The State of the Region Report is used by governments, organizations, financial institutions and private actors and is supported by the Nordic Investment Bank and the Nordic Council of Ministers.