More than 80% of the NUTS 2 regions of the European Union saw their unemployment rate for persons aged 15-74 fall in 2017 compared with 2016, and around 60% recorded a decrease of at least 0.5 percentage points. However, regional unemployment rates continued to vary widely across the EU regions. The 2017 unemployment rate of the Basque Country (11,3%) range below the Spanish average (17,2%) but above the EU average (7,6%).

Source: Eurostat. «Unemployment in the EU regions in 2017»

Likewise, the European Commission has published an empirical analysis of the resilience of European countries to the financial and economic crisis that started in 2007. The analysis addresses the following questions: Which countries showed a resilient behaviour during and after the crisis? Is resilience related only to the economic dimension? Has any of the EU countries been able to use the crisis as an opportunity and “bounce forward”? Is it possible to identify any particular country characteristics linked to resilience? The study carefully selects a number of key economic and social variables that aim to capture the resilience capacities of our society. Resilience is measured by investigating the dynamic response of these variables to the crisis in the short and medium run. The research includes an index at the regional level:

Regional resilience over the period 2000-2015 by NUTS2

Source: European Commission. The resilience of EU Member States to the financial and economic crisis, 2018

The lack of competitiveness, heavy indebtedness, and large exposure to financial markets have plunged Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain into a recession deeper than in many other European countries. However, the effects are not uniform even across regions of the same country, as some of them have shown a much lower resilience than others.