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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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• EU 2002
  
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• EU 2003
  
• EU 2003, 2
  
• EU 2004
  
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• EU 2007
  
• EU 2007, 2
  

Did something radically new happen during the last 12 months? Contrary to many forecasts 2002 has been a rather successful year for the US economy. There wasn't any boom on the stock exchanges but the economy grew at more than 2%. At the same time the Euro area economies* experienced its worst year from the early 90's and they almost slipped into recession (+0.3% **). The World Bank in its Global Economic Prospects 2003 considers EU incapable to outpace the US at least in the following 2 years as far as the economic rates are concerned. With a consumer market falling asleep the quickest way of some economic acceleration could be to pump up the investment but the high technology and telecommunication sectors in Europe have already been saturated in the last years. The foreign trade liberalization, another way to stimulate the economy, also can't help improve the situation. In such sensitive market as the agriculture EU wants to maintain its subsidies until 2013, which blocks the talks with the US and with the other World Trade Organization countries on many different trade issues.

The economic development in Europe during the next 24 months will remain below the world average**. The European dreams of becoming the main world economy locomotive as was till the end of 19th century will remain just the dreams for the time being.

Even the prospects of EU enlargement from 15 to 25 countries by 2004 (and to 27-28 by 2007) won't give much new space for the European industry and services to grow. These new markets may now boast higher rates of economic development than their western partners but don't forget that these ex-communist countries stand far behind the average level of EU consumption (between 25 and 70%). It's more likely that the Eastern Europe will follow the western part of the continent than vice versa.

The real estate market also can't alone improve the macroeconomic situation in Europe. The interest rates have already been decreased without some encouraging economic consequences as did happen in the United States and Canada in 2002.

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* - 12 out of 15 EU member states.

** - World Bank, Global Economic Prospects 2003

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