Socio-economic development of European Union’s periphery

One of the basic features of the European Union is the existence of a distance between countries – literally, in geographical sense and implicitly – the development gap. The second, especially, is the subject of this deliberation. In the theoretical part of this paper the basic idea of peripherality and the sense of socio-economic development are explained. There is surely some causation running from peripherality to low income, however, there is a strong indication that the main causation runs the other way. All the countries which belong to the European Union theoretically should converge, but the pace of this process is varied. In consequence, some economies are quite near to the frontiers of civilization and some of them are stragglers. The presented empirical study concerns the level of socio-economic development of analyzed countries.