December 2019 – February 2021 international consortium (Spatial Foresight (Luxembourg), LIDEEA  Development Actions (Romania), BGI Consulting (Lithuania)) carried out the study “Business Development Opportunities at External EU Borders”. The study was commissioned by the ESPON and Euroregion “Country of Lakes” office (Lithuania). The key objective of the ESPON Targeted Analysis BusDEV project is to analyze the business environment and policies in three pilot regions in Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. The object of the Lithuania region includes Anykščiai, Ignalina, Kupiškis, Molėtai, Švenčionys, Utena, Visaginas and Zarasai district municipalities, which are the part of the Euroregion “Lake Region” (hereinafter referred to as the Region).

 

The main aim of the ESPON study report on the Region is 1) to analyze the development trends of the Euroregion "Lake District" business environment over the last 10 years, 2) to identify the Region's competitiveness due to its geographical proximity to Belarus, municipal and EU structural business support measures for 2014-2020, and 3) to identify possible directions for public intervention that would ensure the sustainable development of the Region in the future.

 

The socio-economic analysis of resources shows that the situation of business competitiveness in the Region is worse than in the whole territory of the Republic of Lithuania. The main reasons for this are the relatively low level of entrepreneurship in the Region, the poor demographic situation, and the low level of investments. Nevertheless, EU Structural Funds investment in entrepreneurship is in many cases lower than in the country as a whole. The region has relatively higher investments in the measures of the Lithuanian Rural Development Program for the period 2014–2020 than in the whole country. This is based on the fact that the agricultural, forestry, and fisheries sectors account for a larger share of the Region's economy in the area analyzed. The level of investment of the measures of the European Union Funds Investment OP for 2014–2020 focused on increasing competitiveness is also recorded than in the whole country. The main reasons for the low level of investment have been identified: the ignorance of business entities about the existing support measures, the needs of the regional business entity are not met by the applied investment conditions, the absorption potential in the region is relatively low. Based on the socio-economic analysis of the evaluation, the survey and the focus group discussion, the fourth industrial revolution and digitalisation, growing regional exclusion, an aging society, rising social inactivity, and unemployment are expected to have the greatest impact on the region's economic growth in the new EU financial perspective.

 

The evaluation used a variety of data collection and analysis methods: document analysis, analysis of secondary sources, monitoring data analysis, analysis of publicly available information, semi-structured interviews, surveys, focus group, expert evaluation.

 

ESPON is an applied research programme aimed at supporting the formulation of territorial development policies in Europe. To this end, the programme produces wide-ranging and systematic data on territorial trends related to various economic, social and environmental aspects, with a view to identifying the potential of regions, cities and larger territories and the economic challenges they face. ESPON activities cover all EU Member States, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, and involve more than 130 bodies across the continent.

 

The evaluation is available here.