Our study investigates the economic growth and catch-up of the NUTS3 regions of 6 Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states of the European Union (EU), 4 countries acceding in 2004 (Czechia, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia) and further two admitted in 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania), compared to the average of 14 older members of the EU between 2000 and 2019. We based our analysis on the urban–rural region types of the EU in the case of 185 regions, identifying predominantly urban, intermediate, and predominantly rural types. We apply Theil Index to examine the development of disparities and test the phenomena with unconditional β-convergence hypothesis. The analysis indicates that the growth of all CEE countries and their regions is faster than the EU14 average; the capitals considerably exceed it, the catch-up of other urban regions is also relatively fast, while it is very slow in the case of other regions. The convergence between the 185 regions is weak, based on the EU region typology it was initially strong between the capitals, moderate in the case of intermediate and rural types, while divergence can be observed in the urban types. The catch-up of less developed regions is very slow despite EU cohesion funding, even though 80% of the population live here. The stagnation of regional disparities and slow catch-up of less developed regions indicate the poor efficiency of the EU cohesion policy.

我们的研究调查了欧盟 (EU) 6 个中东欧 (CEE) 成员国、2004 年加入的 4 个国家（捷克、波兰、匈牙利和斯洛伐克）以及进一步的 NUTS3 地区的经济增长和追赶情况。 2007 年，欧盟接纳了 2 个老年成员国（保加利亚和罗马尼亚），而 2000 年至 2019 年间，欧盟老年成员国的平均人数为 14 个。我们对欧盟 185 个地区的城乡地区类型进行了分析，确定了以城市为主的地区、中等、主要是农村类型。我们应用泰尔指数来检验差异的发展，并用无条件 β 收敛假设来检验这种现象。分析表明，所有中东欧国家及其地区的增长均快于欧盟14国平均水平；首都地区远远超过，其他城市地区的追赶速度也比较快，而其他地区则非常缓慢。185个地区之间的趋同性较弱，根据欧盟地区类型学，最初在首都之间趋同性较强，在中等和农村类型的情况下趋同性较弱，而在城市类型中可以观察到分化。尽管有欧盟凝聚力资金，欠发达地区的追赶仍然非常缓慢，尽管80%的人口居住在这里。地区差距的停滞和欠发达地区的缓慢追赶表明欧盟凝聚政策的低效率。