THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS OF EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES AND STRATEGIES FOR ITS ENHANCEMENT: A TAXONOMIC ANALYSIS

The aim of this article is to identify clusters of countries with similar levels of competitiveness among the EU-27 countries and to identify for each of the 27 EU countries the path of competitiveness growth. The cluster analysis conducted confirms the hypothesis that the European Union is an area with a high differentiation in terms of levels of competitiveness. The analysis shows that the strategy to increase competitiveness should be significantly different for each EU country. It is suggested that in order to increase its international competitiveness each EU country should follow the pattern of the country which stands above it in terms of competitiveness ranking, but at the same time is most similar.