Europe’s banking system has been in a continuous stage of systemic fragility since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007-08. The present phase is a two-way process of sovereign and banking crises feeding one another.

The specialization of countries in international trade reveals their comparative advantages and disadvantages. The CHELEM database which provides complete and consistent statistics classified by country in the long term is used to analyze the structural aspect of the competitiveness of nations in all economic sectors, namely the primary sector, industry and services.

Although economists have long stressed the limitations of using GDP to evaluate standards of living, the debate was recently reignited by the publication of the Stiglitz report. The CEPII has proposed to calculate an indicator for the year 2009 and 34 countries incorporating certain social data items in terms of income equivalents.