The Eurostat Regional Yearbook 2016 looks at regions of the EU Members States from various points of view.  Click also on the interactive map.

The capital city regions of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, France, Croatia, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden were the only regions from each of these EU Member States where GDP per capita was higher than the national average in 2014.  Among the multi-regional EU Member States, GDP per capita grew at a faster pace than the EU-28 average in every region of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, as well as every region except for the capital city region in Belgium, the Czech Republic and Austria, and every region except for one (not the capital city region) in Denmark and Germany.

Between 2008 and 2013, R & D expenditure as a percentage of GDP rose in 20 of the EU Member States,and remained unchanged in the United Kingdom. The highest increases included a gain of 0.97 percentage points in Slovenia (note there is a break in series), followed by the Czech Republic (0.67 points) and Belgium (0.50 points). Aside from Finland and Sweden (mentioned above), there was a decline in the relative share of GERD in GDP in five other Member States: Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Romania (note there is a break in series) and Luxembourg. By 2013, there were only two EU Member States which had already attained their national Europe 2020 targets in relation to expenditure on R & D: the Czech Republic (note, its target is set with respect to the public sector) and Denmark.

The only eastern regions of the EU to record intensities above 2.00 % were: the Czech regions of Jihovýchod (2.84 %), Praha (2.59 %) and Střední Čechy (2.15 %), as well as Slovenia (2.60 %, no regional data available).

The share of students following vocational education programmes varied considerably across the EU Member States, with a particularly high specialisation in vocational education in a cluster of regions covering the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and northern Italy, as well as Switzerland. Some of these differences may be attributed to perceptions concerning vocational education and training: for example, in countries such as the Czech Republic and Austria, vocational education and training is generally considered as an attractive proposition that facilitates an individual’s transition into the labour market, whereas in some other EU Member States its role is often less developed, in part due to less positive societal perceptions. Vocational education accounted for more than three quarters of upper secondary students in Czech regions (Severozápad, Jihozápad) and one Austrian region.

In Severozápad in the north-west of the Czech Republic, the lowest share of tertiary educational attainment in the EU was recorded, at 15.4 %. The level of tertiary educational attainment was also relatively low in many regions across Austria and the Czech Republic. This may, at least in part, be attributed to a particular emphasis placed on vocational education in these EU Member States, where emphasis is placed on professional qualifications rather than academic ones, the report says.

Also, the lowest shares of early leavers from educationa and training (less than 5%) concentrated in a band stretching from Poland down through the Czech Republic and Slovakia, into south-eastern Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. The proportion of young people who were neither in employment nor in education or training was as low as 6.2 % in the Netherlands, and was below 10 % in Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Austria and the Czech Republic. 

While the 13 highest regional unemployment rates in the EU were concentrated either in Greece or Spain, 9 out of the 11 lowest regional unemployment rates were located in Germany — the only exceptions were the Czech capital city region of Praha (with an unemployment rate of 2.8 % in 2015) and the Austrian region of Tirol (3.0 %). Youth unemployment rates are below 10% in the Czech region of Jihozapad.

The weight of the industrial economy in the non-financial business economy workforce was most concentrated in a band of regions that ran from Bulgaria up through Romania into Hungary before splitting to the south into Slovenia and northern Italy, and to the north into Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. In addition there were two regions each in Germany (NUTS level 1) and Austria and single regions in Spain, Finland and Sweden.

The industrial workforce accounted for 48.2 % of non-financial business economy employment in the Czech region of Severovýchod in 2013, with the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semitrailers its largest industrial employer. The industrial economy also accounted for more than 45 % of the non-financial business economy workforce in the Romanian region of Vest, another Czech region (Strední Morava), two Bulgarian regions (Severozapaden and Severen tsentralen) and the Hungarian region of KözépDunántúl. Outside of these eastern regions of the EU, the central Italian region of Marche (which was the most specialised region in the EU for the manufacture of leather and leather products) recorded the highest share of its non-financial business economy workforce employed within the industrial economy at 39,3%.

The share of non-financial services employment. rose to at least 80 % in the following capital city regions: Southern and Eastern (Ireland; 2012 data), the Área Metropolitana de Lisboa (Portugal), the Comunidad de Madrid (Spain), and Noord-Holland (the Netherlands), as well as Oslo og Akershus (Norway); note that the data for the Région de Bruxelles-Capitale/ Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest (Belgium), Praha (the Czech Republic), Berlin (Germany; NUTS level 1) and Wien (Austria) are confidential and as such their precise values may not be disclosed, although it is clear that non-financial services accounted for at least three quarters of the non-financial business economy workforce in each of these regions. The lowest shares (below 44 %) were reported in the Czech regions of Severozápad, Střední Morava and Severovýchod.

Capital city regions were the most specialised regions in many of the information and communication and business services. As already noted, Inner London - West was the most specialised region in the EU for multimedia publishing, real estate activities, legal and accounting activities, activities of head offices, and advertising and market research. Among the remaining information and communication and business services divisions, the most specialised regions included the capital city regions of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Austria, Portugal and Romania.

In Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Croatia and Slovakia, the highest enterprise birth rates were registered for the capital city region. The EU’s three-year survival rate for the business economy is estimated to be roughly 55 %, in other words, just over half of the enterprises born in 2010 had survived into 2013. Sweden and Belgium (only national data available) had high three-year survival rates, just below 75 %. Other regions where three-year survival rates were at least 60 % were located in Italy (nine regions), the Czech capital city region, Cyprus and Luxembourg (each one region at this level of detail), as well as in Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and Slovenia.

The proportion of the working-age population classified as HRST also rose to over 40 % in two regions from Spain, and the capital city regions of the Czech Republic, France, Austria and Slovakia In 2014, the highest share of people working in hightech sectors was 11.0 %, as recorded in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, a region with a high density of enterprises in information and communications technology and life sciences located in the infrastructure-rich area to the west of London. Nearly all of the 10 other NUTS level 2 regions with shares in excess of 7.5 % were capital city regions, from Ireland and Austria in the west, Denmark, Finland and Sweden in the north, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia in the east, and Spain in the south. Germany and the United Kingdom recorded a relatively high number of regions where the employment share of high-tech sectors was above 4.5 %, with 12 such regions in Germany and 10 in the United Kingdom. In Belgium, four regions in and around the capital city region recorded shares of employment in high-tech sectors that were above 4.5 %, as did a cluster of three regions in and around the Czech capital city region.

Among the four landlocked EU Member States with more than one region, the most popular regions for inbound tourists were also capital city regions in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. In 2014, the most popular region in the Czech Republic for residents was Severovychod, for non-residents the capital city of Prague. Bedroom occupancy rates in hotels and similar establishments were particularly high in many capital city regions, including those of the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Finland and Sweden: in each of these EU Member States the capital city region was the only one where the occupancy rate reached or exceeded 60 %. 

The range from highest to lowest gender gap was relatively narrow within each country, with the exceptions often caused by a single outlier, such as the relatively low gaps for Åland in Finland, Bratislavský kraj in Slovakia and Praha in the Czech Republic.

Read full report here (in English).