Within the auspices of the Project Assessing & Streamlining the Potentials of the Open Balkan Initiative CEA prepared a macro-forecast  on the POTENTIAL MACRO-EFFECTS OF COHESION POLICY – NORTH MACEDONIA.

The primary goal of this sub-task is to estimate the possible effects of the cohesion policy funds once available, implying membership, in contributing towards shortening the convergence of North Macedonia with the EU.

Thus, it is our intend is to indicate that being outside of the EU will take WB6 countries’ GDP per capita to catch up with the average EU-27 around 70 years, versus the possibility to tap into the possibilities the cohesion policy funds offer (implying full-fledged member state status), and whether and by how much the convergence period may be shortened.

The forecast results for converging towards today’s EU per capita GDP may take well over four decades.

In number of years of reaching 90% threshold of todays’ average GDP per capita of the EU under three scenarios indicate that it will take North Macedonia:

• 61 years under historical scenario
• 40 years under a baseline scenario
• 36 years with access to cohesion policy funds scenario

Read the full report here:

ENG: RAPID MACRO-FORECAST: POTENTIAL MACRO-EFFECTS OF COHESION POLICY – NORTH MACEDONIA