Informes fundacIó catalunya europa [05/17] Are stAteless nAtions discriminAted in terms of sociAl progress? An AnAlysis of the 19 efA countries through the dAtA of the europeAn regionAl sociAl progress index. [autor:] MARC TATARET BATALLA peer revIewer: JORDI ANGUSTO ZAMBRANO Amb lA col·lAborAció de: Informes fundacIó catalunya europa [05/17] Are stAteless nAtions discriminAted in terms of sociAl progress? An AnAlysis of the 19 efA countries through the dAtA of the europeAn regionAl sociAl progress index. [autor:] MARC TATARET BATALLA peer revIewer: JORDI ANGUSTO ZAMBRANO Contents 1. Introduction – Executive Summary. ...................................................................................... 3 1.1 The EU-SPI as an analytical tool. ......................................................................................... 4 1.2 The EFA countries. ......................................................................................................... 6 1.3 Methodology. ................................................................................................................ 7 2. Comparing the 19 EFA countries. .......................................................................................... 9 3. EFA Countries Profile. .......................................................................................................... 14 3.1 First Analysis: Bavaria ........................................................................................................ 15 3.2. Second Analysis: Flemish Region ..................................................................................... 18 3.3. Third Analysis: The Six EFA Countries of Spain................................................................. 22 3.4. Fourth Analysis: The Two EFA Countries of France .......................................................... 35 3.5. Fifth Analysis: The Four EFA Countries of Italy................................................................. 41 3.6. Sixth Analysis: Friesland (NL) ............................................................................................ 50 3.7. Seventh Analysis: The Two EFA Countries of the United Kingdom .................................. 52 3.8. Eighth Analysis: Moravia .................................................................................................. 59 3.9. Ninth Analysis: Latvia ....................................................................................................... 63 4. Conclusions. Is there a lack of social progress amongst EFA Countries? ............................ 64 5. Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 66 2 1. Introduction – Executive Summary. The Scottish Independence Referendum held in September 2014 or the next coming Catalan referendum on October 2017 confirm that nationalistic and sovereign movements have gained momentum in Europe. In this study, we will analyse the situation of 19 EFA countries in accordance with their results on the EU-SPI (European Union Regional Social Progress Index) to better improve our understanding of their current situation and the roots of that momentum. The 19 regions analysed in this study are represented by members of the EFA, European Free Alliance1, a political party of the European Parliament that gathers 45 progressive nationalist, regionalist and autonomist parties and wants to promote the right of self-determination of peoples. We refer to those EU Regions that have a strong will to became an independent state as EFA countries. Our main goal is to check if there is a social progress “cost” in the EFA countries that helps us understand the strength of the nationalistic claims in those EFA countries. An example could be the situation of Catalonia, country that has a much lower social progress (EU-SPI Rank 163rd) that what would be normal according to its GDP per capita (EU Rank 68th). Due to the inflow of money to the Spanish state that does not come back to Catalonia, the Catalan people do not dispose of those resources to increase their social progress, and that may be an explanation to its situation. In our research, we have found that not all EFA countries fit in the Catalan profile, but Lombardy or Veneto do so in the Italian context. There is not a straightforward relationship between a relatively high GDPpc and a lack of social progress in the EFA countries. There are countries with a low GDP per capita and a low EU-SPI (Campania), countries with a high GDPpc and a low EU-SPI (Veneto), countries with a low GDPpc and high EU-SPI (Wales) and countries with a high GDPpc and a high EU-SPI (Bavaria). This has led us to the conclusion that independentist movements are mainly based in cultural aspects, but it is when you add socio-economic revindications when they become stronger. The roots of nationalistic claims are not economic factors, but when a country has a strong national feeling and a socio-economic offense, it is very possible to find a very strong nationalistic movement. In the first chapter, we will present the dataset that has been used as a base for this study (EU- SPI), the EFA countries analysed (and their respective political parties that are members of EFA) and the methodology of the study. In the second chapter, we will analyse the 19 countries chosen for this study and we will compare them with each other, checking the main figures on population, GDP per capita and the EU-SPI results. Finally, in the third chapter we will contextualize the situation of the EFA countries in the context of the current states they are part of, states that will be known in the rest of the report as EU Member States. 1 http://www.e-f-a.org/about-us/whats-efa-and-history/ 3 1.1 The EU-SPI as an analytical tool. The European Union Regional Social Progress Index is a tool developed by the European Commission (DG Regio), Instituto Orkestra and Deloitte to measure the social progress in the 272 regions of the European Union, according to the methodology of the Social Progress Index, developed by the organization Social Progress Imperative (non-profit). The definitive version was released in October 20162. A first draft was released in February 20163. As the main index, computed for more than 130 countries in the world, the EU Regional Social Progress Index (EU-SPI) is a tool to complement existing welfare indices (such as GDP per capita or HDI), evaluating how effectively the economic success of a country is transformed into social progress. The EU-SPI unit of analysis are the 272 NUTS 2 Regions of the European Union. To do so, it uses 50 indicators (the main data sources are Eurostat and the EU-SILC). Those 50 indicators are divided in three main dimensions: 1. Basic Human Needs 2. Foundations of Wellbeing 3. Opportunity Each dimension is divided in four components (totalizing in 12 components), which at the time contain from three to seven indicators. Those indicators are normalised and then aggregated to compute the EU-SPI score. When the index was released, it showed a great contrast between how regions performed if we use the GDP per capita as a measure of well-being, and how they perform if we use the EU-SPI. Some regions, as the capital region of Belgium (Région de Bruxelles-Capitale), which has a large GDP per capita performed poorly in the EU-SPI (you can find other examples, mainly in capital regions and in many regions in Italy and Spain). There are two notable difference between the EU-SPI and Global SPI: 1. A lower correlation between per capita income and the EU-SPI that between SPI Global and per capita income 2. Different results in the Opportunity dimension in Europe, as well as a different behaviour of the components Access to Basic Knowledge, Personal Safety, Personal Rights and Tolerance and Inclusion.4 2 http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/information/maps/social_progress 3 https://www2.deloitte.com/gr/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/social-progress-index.html 4 Expanded extract written by the author of the study, Marc Tataret Batalla, to disseminate the knowledge about the EU Social Progress Index. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Social_Progress_Index 4 The usefulness of the EU-SPI as analytical tool was tested in a previous study commissioned to Fundació Catalunya Europa by The Greens-EFA group of the European Parliament5. The region that was chosen to test the EU-SPI applications was Catalonia. The study identified the three most problematic issues for the Catalan society. Those problems, which are possibly correlated, were: • Access to Basic Knowledge • Personal Rights • Shelter The EU Social Progress Index is a very enriching form of measuring the welfare of a society. Its multidimensional structure enables the detection and specification of the main problems that affect our society with an accuracy far greater than the GDP per capita or the Human Development Index, and enables the adoption of specific measures to tackle them. You can find which indicators make each component in the in the following table, taken from the EU-SPI website, that contains the data of Catalonia (Catalunya), one of the 272 NUTS regions that appear in the EU-SPI dataset. Table 1. The EU-SPI Dimensions, components and indicators: 5 Beyond GDP: Applications and Interpretation of the EU-SPI by Marc Tataret, Jordi Angusto and Francesc Colomé. 5 1.2 The EFA countries. In this study, we are analysing the 19 EFA countries highlighted in the map below: In the Netherlands, we can find the NUTS 26 region