Messung ökonomischer Integration in der Europäischen Union – Entwicklung eines EU-Integrationsindexes (Measuring economic integration in the European Union – the development of a new index)

Abstract

The concept of European integration is often investigated in scientific papers and political debates, a uniform definition of this concept does not exist, however. Thereby, different steps and processes of European integration are hardly quantifiable. Moreover, it is hardly ever discussed that the level of integration varies greatly between the individual EU member states. Thus, in this paper an index is developed that determines annually the degree of European integration of the individual member states over the last twelve years This composite indicator is able to capture the variety of forms of integration in different markets and with respect to different economic outcomes. The overall index includes various sub-indices representing the individual areas of integration. Particular emphasis is placed on distributing adequate and proper weights to the 25 individual indicators, using the principal component analysis in an extensive way. It is shown that in fact the member states are integrated to strongly varying degrees. Over the last twelve years the level of integration has increased in almost all of the analyzed countries, however. Additionally, the sub-indices show that the ranking of EU countries differs greatly between the various areas of integration.