Croatia's National Competitiveness Council on Wednesday presented results of the the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Lisbon Review 2006.
"The review is the third in a biennial series that assesses the progress made by the EU member countries in the far-reaching goals of the EU"s Lisbon Strategy of economic and structural reforms, the last of which was published in 2004. In addition to assessing the performance of the 25 existing EU members, it also measures the competitive performance of the countries on the waiting list to join in coming years," the WEF reported on its web site.
"Denmark is the most competitive economy as measured by the European Union"s own Lisbon criteria, followed by Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany," according to the document.
"Among candidate countries, Croatia and Turkey, two countries with no foreseen entry date, do better in many of the different dimensions, and in the overall ranking, than Bulgaria and Romania, two countries which will join the EU in January 2007. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that both Croatia and Turkey score higher overall than Poland, a present EU member," the WEF said on its web site.
The WEF review has compared results of reforms the countries are taking to develop an information society, achieve market liberalisation, ensure innovations, research and development, improve enterprise environment, increase social inclusion and enhance sustainable development.
Croatia has been commended for excellent results in all the categories, with an observation that there is still much space for improvements in the development of the telecommunications and transport sectors.
Croatia's reforms aimed at making the economy more competitive have been assessed as the most successful in comparison to efforts taken by Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro as well as EU member Poland.
The chairman of the above-mentioned council, Darko Marinac has said that the review is the confirmation that Croatia has done a lot this year to improve its competitiveness.