Clara Volintiru is the Director of the Black Sea Trust (BST) of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). Before joining the BST, she was the Director of the New Economy and Society Program at the Aspen Institute of Romania and a consultant for international organizations such as the World Bank, European Commission, Eurofound, and Committee of the Regions. Her work covered the European Union, the Transatlantic space, also Western Balkans, the Eastern Partnership, and the Southern Neighbourhood of the EU. She is a Professor of International Political Economy at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE). Her recent publications appeared with Oxford University Press, Palgrave, Routledge, and Springer, and in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of European Public Policy, European Political Science Review, Acta Politica, CESifo Economic Studies, European Politics and Society, Eastern European Politics, European Political Science, or Research & Politics. Synthetic versions of her work are available in video abstracts or such online platforms as Forbes, EUROPP, IPI Global Observatory, Emerging Europe, Global Policy, Social Europe, Huffington Post and on the GMF website.
The Power of Innovation: Development Trajectories for Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe faces three major growth trajectories: through economic integration, through the development of sustainable growth models at the national and local levels, and local developmental alliances. EU integration consolidated the economic, political, and legal freedoms in many of the ECE countries, which in turn allowed them to develop more sophisticated economic models. While many countries in the region experienced economic growth, data in the Freedom and Prosperity Indexes raise the question of how sustainable their development trajectories have been: improvements in freedom are equally important, ensuring greater and more durable prosperity. Unlike Western Europe, which went through a period of economic slowdown, for ECE countries the last decade saw a period of economic growth and prosperity. However large subnational disparities mean the beneficial effects of economic integration are not felt equally, and the relative economic deprivation in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe can be linked to growing anti-liberal political sentiment. This is why innovation is direly needed in both the marketplace with value-added of production—leading to better-paid jobs, and in the local development policies—leading to a more balanced economic growth model.