The study is based on the interdisciplinary approaches taken from economics, political science, sociology, and history. It pays attention to the interplay between the economic system, the political sphere as well as the cultural and ideological dimension of peripherality. The core and periphery dynamics represent a perspective that analyses power inequalities and dependencies. The study focuses on two peripheries in the European Union: Southern Europe (the South), as well as Central Eastern and South-East Europe (the East) – i.e., 17 EU Member States. The key aim is to understand how core-periphery dynamics shape the EU.
Historian and journalist Veronika Sušová-Salminen and economist Giuseppe Celi talk about European South and East and illustrate reasons behind permanent crises and difficulties faced by Southern and Eastern states of the EU, explaining also how the structure of the EU does not help them to ‘catch up’ with richer central states in terms of welfare and development. They also look for ways of development of the whole Europe which do not deepen the inequalities between peripheries and the centre. After all, often in the history of humanity those were people from the periphery who came up with courageous, revolutionary ideas, and advocated a real change.
The whole study “Hundred Shades of the EU – Mapping the Political Economy of the EU Peripheries”, a free eBook and summaries in multiple languages, can be found here.