The impact of EU accession on the economic performance of the countries' internal (NUTS 3) regions

The research objective of the presented study is to find out the consequences of the EU accession on internal regions in terms of regional convergence or divergence. The conception of analysis is based on the convergence theory which states that all industrial systems would converge because of the determinant effects of technological development. The samples for empirical analysis include NUTS 3 regions within the "new" EU countries (the countries of the former socialist bloc that entered the EU in 2004 and 2007) and Croatia as a "control country", the economic performance of which is measured by real GDP per capita for 2000-2011, the applied method - basic panel data analysis. The main findings of the research allow to argue that positively perceived trend of actual declining of economic performance's interregional variation within the "new" EU countries is not the consequence of joining the EU. The basic conclusion with regard to the results of the research is that the "new" EU countries are undergoing a natural inverted U-shaped trend of changes of their economic performance's interregional variation that depends both on the country average GDP's per capita growth and on the length of the period of self-development under the conditions of market economy rather than on the factor of unionization as such within the EU.