2021 03 24
Eurostat has great statistics about how GDP per capita changed in European countries. This is publicly available on this page:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/sdg_08_10/default/
The data are provided in Euro per capita per year.
I selected 8 countries from the East-Central European region: Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. Next page shows the GDP per capita change of these countries from 2000 to 2020.
The base tendency is economic growth in all countries, but different degree. The economic crisis in 2008-2009 is very apparent almost in all countries, similarly to the COVID case in 2020. Hungary and Croatia lost relative position, the other countries are stable compared to each other (see the diagram in the Appendix).
Slovenia has the highest GDP per capita since the beginning of the examined period. This country has similar economic values like the poorest EU-member countries, which were not part of the communist bloc before 1990, like Greece, Malta, Portugal or Cyprus. Slovenia is EU-member since 2004 and uses Euro since 2007.
This is the second richest country in the region. After collapse of the Eastern Bloc, Czechoslovakia also exploded. The bigger and richer part was the Czech Republic. Not counting East Germany, Czech Republic was the most developed country in the ex Eastern Bloc. Czechia is EU-member since 2004, but still uses its national currency Koruna.
The smaller and poorer part of Czechoslovakia was Slovakia, which started its economy in 1993 pretty low, but became stronger and stronger, bypassed Hungary and became the third most developed in the region. Slovakia is EU-member since 2004, and uses Euro since 2009.
Hungary started the system change relatively early, already in the late 80s, and this helped to become part of the most 3 prosperous East-Central European countries in the 90’s. However, as visible on the diagram, this relative good position declined. Hungary is EU-member since 2004, but still uses the national currency Forint.
After a severe extraordinary state in the 80’s Poland was the first country in the Eastern Bloc where somewhat free elections were held. It was the poorest country among the Visegrad Group (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary), but as of now it has similar numbers like Hungary. Poland is EU-member since 2004, but still uses its national currency Złoty.
Croatia was the second most developed republic in Yugoslavia, and still it is, after Slovenia. After the country breakup Croatia suffered a severe war, which was over in 1995. Since 2000 it has a similar economic path like Hungary, declining in the relative position. The country is EU member since 2013, but still uses its national currency Kuna.
Romania was in hardest economical situation in the late 80s. But it had a great economic improvement since then, becoming closer and closer to Hungary. Romania is EU-member since 2007, but still uses its national currency Leu.
Serbia could have had similar economic situation like Hungary, Poland or Croatia if there were no war and international sanctions against this country, but in the early 90s its economy radically fell back. This is the reason why it has so low economic position right now. It is not yet EU-member.