an increase in activity in the other countries, which in turn will lead to an
increase in imports (and thus to export possibilities as well as higher activity in
the other Member States). Extensive intra-EU trade under fixed exchange rates
should thus contribute in a major way to increased synchronisation of the
business cycles.
There may be various reasons for the lack of synchronisation in the 1980s and
1990s. Firstly, there are still significant differences in industrial structure
between countries, and similarly, the functioning of the labour markets differs
from Member State to Member State. It is obvious that such structural
differences may mean that the economic development in the individual
countries will not concur when external conditions change. Secondly, the
economic policy of the individual Member States has been determined by
internal considerations rather than by the consideration of a co-ordination of the
general development in business cycles in the EU.
Looking at differences in unemployment figures, there is no sign of a
development towards more homogenous employment structures between the
members. Figure 6 illustrates the differences in unemployment via a Lorenz
curve in 1985 and 1998 for the current 15 Member States. The countries are
ranked according to their rate of unemployment, and from left to right, the
Lorenz curves display co-ordinates of cumulated share of total unemployment
and cumulated share of total labour force in EUR15. The curvature thus
visualises the inequality in the distribution of unemployment and it is apparent
that the inequality has not changed substantially between 1985 and 1998. More
precisely, the inequality is expressed by the Gini coefficient which made up
0.11 in 1985 and 0.10 in 1998, i.e. in reality, the inequality is unchanged.
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