出版社：Europäisches Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, Potsdam
摘要：EU eastern enlargement raises many challenges and brings new opportunities
in terms of trade, capital flows and exchange of digital information/data. Relatively poor
accession countries enter the Community during a period in which information and
communication technology (ICT) play a particular role for OECD countries’ growth and
structural change. This is an important aspect which distinguishes the southern EU
enlargement from eastern EU enlargement. In the 1990s, the US and several EU-15
countries recorded relatively high growth rates where ICT had a strong impact on the
acceleration of productivity growth and output dynamics. We first look at the main
characteristics of ICT and raise the question to which extent accession countries are well
positioned to catch up with some EU-15 countries in selected fields of ICT, in particular in
telecommunications. A series of descriptive statistics of EU-15 and accession countries
shows that eastern European countries have a long way to go in some fields of digital
catching-up. Some eastern European accession countries show better than average
performance in terms of mobile telecommunication density, internet density or internet
host density than is found in Portugal or Greece. However, the lack of competition and
problems with privatization impair digital modernization – and economic catching-up –
and digital European integration. The European Commission should look critically into the
unsolved policy problems in accession countries.
关键词：EU, Accession Countries, Economic Development, Technological Change,
Growth, International Economics
