Although economists and politicians usually concentrate on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of well-being there are in fact two other widely used measures that can give us a better insight of how our countries are performing. The first of these is the Human Development Index (HDI). It looks at the average picture in a country across three key fields – health and life expectancy, knowledge and standards of living. These are then combined statistically to give an index figure that will be between 0 (very poor) and 1 (very good). Like all index figures therefore it is a way of comparing rather than a measure of an absolute amount of something.

Europe 2020 is the EU’s strategic response to the economic crisis. Ten years ago the Lisbon Agenda set the target that the EU would becomes the world’s leading knowledge economy by 2010. That did not happen. Average growth rates were actually lower than those of global competitors. Then the economic crisis wiped out the growth that had been achieved. Europe 2020 tries to set out the road to follow for the coming decade. Though it says that we must ‘escape the reflex of trying to return to the pre-crisis situation’, its main prescriptions echo those of the Lisbon Agenda with a rhetoric about globalization and innovation. What’s new is that it contains seven ‘flagship initiatives’ to point the way ahead. These are:

Let’s start with a trend scenario that tries to look ahead to 2030. This sees Europe’s economic growth continuing to lag behind that of its global competitors, most notably those from Asia. Within the Baltic Sea Region recovery from economic crisis was slow and uneven in the period 2010-2015. Norway with its natural resource base and sustained investment in infrastructure and education remained very prosperous. Russia, also blessed with abundant energy supplies at a time of steadily increasing energy prices also rode out the recession and became an increasingly sought-after ally by the EU. In Sweden, recovery was more uneven, with more and more questions being asked about the costs to the taxpayer of supporting the very sparsely populated regions in the north of the country.