使欧洲改革在实地取得成功

REGIONALECONOMICOUTLOOK EUROPE Making European Reforms a Successon the Ground 2025NOV Contents Making European Reforms a Success on the Ground ......................................................................................... 2Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................... 2Europe Needs Higher Growth……………………………………………………………………………………..................2Reforms Can Deliver—Big Time................................................................................................................................ 4A Closer Look at How Reforms Affect Europe’s Hubs...............................................................................................6 Boxes Box 2.1. Sizing up the Scope for Reducing Intra-EU Trade Barriers ....................................................................... 13Box 2.2. Capital Misallocation in Europe: The Case of Venture Capital .................................................................. 15 Figures Figure 2.1. Decomposition of GDP per Capita Difference with the US......................................................................3Figure 2.2. GDP PPP per Capita Forecast................................................................................................................3Figure 2.3. Per-Capita Income Gains from National and EU-Level Reforms.............................................................4Figure 2.4. Gains from National and EU-Level Intermediate Reform Package across Countries.............................5Figure 2.5. Labor Productivity Rises Slowly with Employment Density in Europe..................................................... 8Figure 2.6. Most European Contries Benefit too Little from the Concentration of Activity.........................................8Figure 2.7. Improving Local Conditions Can Bring Sizable Productivity Gains..........................................................9 Making European Reforms a Success on the Ground Executive Summary Europe’s medium-term growth prospects remain subdued. There is broad recognition that growth need not be thislow, and there is also a common understanding of what is standing in the way. Yet, decisive policy action has beenlacking. One reason is that there is uncertainty around the size of the gains and how they are distributed. This Fully eliminating domestic structural policy gaps to the global frontier and lowering intra-European Union (EU)cross-border barriers to trade and labor mobility to those observed within the United States (US) would raise EUproductivity by 20.2 percent. Considering second-round effects through higher investment, such a package would Tracing out the adjustment process “on the ground” helps assess how policies will affect firms and householdswithin countries. The Note’s analysis shows that Europe’s productivity gap is foremost driven by inefficiencies inEuropean production hubs where firms cluster, which account for about 60 percent of EU GDP. Coordinating EU-level policy initiatives to deepen the single market with domestic structural reforms would unlock the underlying In addition to structural reforms at the national and EU level, the findings of the Note call for carefully designedpolicies to maximize gains at production hubs (for example, ensuring affordable housing and through policiestargeting spillovers) while providing support to lagging regions without hindering the benefits from agglomeration Europe Needs Higher Growth Higher growth is the cornerstone for addressing Europe’s most significant challenges (see Note 1 in this report),yet the outlook remains weak. The EU’s per-capita GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms is nearly 30percent lower than in the US, with around three-quarters of the gap due to lower productivity (Figure 2.1). Under In line with flagship EU diagnoses (Letta, 2024; Draghi 2024), a number of recent IMF studies have set outrecommendations to put European growth on a substantially higher trajectory (Adilbish and others 2025; Arnoldand others 2025; Budina and others 2025; Kammer 2025). These recommendations fall under five broad priority (1)Closing domestic structural policy gaps to the global frontier.(2)Tackling remaining intra-EU trade costs.(3)Removing barriers to intra-EU labor mobility. Despite broad agreement with these policy priorities, decisive policy action has been lacking, reflecting, amongother things, uncertainty around the size of the gains and the impact at the country and local level. This puts apremium on the design of policy packages that seek to maximize complementarities from different reforms, Sources:IMF, World Economic Outlook database; and IMF staffcalculations.Note: Current PPP. For the aggregate of EUR countries (including alsoAlbania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo,North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, Serbia, This N