AUGUST 2014 / NO. 2
TAGS: COMPETITIVENESS, NATIONS,, STEPHANE GARELLI, IMD, WORLD COMPETITIVENESS YEARBOOK, EU-SUMMIT, EUROPEAN COMMISSION, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, CROATIA

The competitiveness of nations

“Competitiveness analyzes how Nations and Enterprises manage the totality of their competencies to achieve prosperity or profit”, Professor Stephane Garelli, IMD
This definition comes from my friend Stephane Garelli, who has, with his team in Lausanne, published the IMD “World Competitiveness Yearbook” every year since 1989. Nations and enterprises are in the business of managing a set of competencies and skills to achieve prosperity for the one and profit for the other. The Yearbook currently covers 63 countries and is based on 340 criteria grouped into four competitiveness factors: economic performance, government and business efficiency, and infrastructure. It was generated in collaboration with fifty-five partner institutes worldwide and is based on an annual Executive Opinion Survey of 4,200 respondents. Data are aggregated over a 5-year period. This is indeed great research!
At the Lisbon EU-Summit in 2000 our political leaders proclaimed: “In 2010 Europe should be the leading competitive knowledge economy in the world”. However, looking at the facts and figures in the World Competitiveness Yearbook we can only come to the dramatic conclusion that our European politicians and political leaders have failed completely! In addition, at the EU we have non-elected, overpaid people like Barroso, Van Rompuy, Neelie Kroes, Olli Rehn, Catherine Ashton and another 22 members of the European Commission, a European Parliament without any power and a further 55,000 nice and overpaid public servants.
Do you remember those names by the way? We have never heard of them again. Below, we give Stephane Garelli’s definition of the “competitiveness of a nation”. All the EU countries have lost their competitiveness, except for Sweden and Germany.

The 28th country in the EU: Croatia

On 1st July, 2013, Croatia joined the EU as its 28th member. It has a population of 4.3 million of whom 1.2 million are retired. Of these 1.2 million retirees, 500,000 are veterans from the civil war. Some 2 million people are working class with an unemployment rate of 20%, a percentage which is expected to increase dramatically during the coming years. In fact, the economy of Croatia has collapsed, it is bankrupt and the country sees joining the EU as the last resort to survive! The profile of the country is institutionalized nationalism, corruption and no free press. Welcome to the EU-country number 28.
“The Competitiveness of a Nation is how a Nation manages the Totality of its Resources and Competencies to increase the Prosperity of its People”
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