Cluster Analysis of Digital Economy in the Old European Union Countries

Improving conditions for developing digital economy has been considered as a basic determinant of keeping international competiveness of Europe. It has been pointed as one of the main objectives of the Europe 2020 plan. In this document an objective of reducing disparities, also in this field, has been given as an important task for the EU. The disparities in using the potential of the digital economy between the old EU-15 economies and the new member states has been an effect of structural underdevelopment of Eastern and Central Europe. However, recent years have also shown significant differences in this field among the EU-15. The main purpose of the article is to analyse the similarities between the old EU countries in regard to the digital economy development. In the research the Ward's clustering method was applied. Data provided by Eurostat were used for the analysis in the years 2011 and 2017. The research confirmed important disparities between the EU-15 countries, which indicate that the traditionally lower developed Southern European countries are not able to use the potential of the digital economy phenomenon for reducing the distance to the European leaders.