Cluster analysis of digital economy in the European Union

In the reality of globalised economy, high competitive potential of developed countries is mostly dependent on their abilities to take advantage of digital economy. Last two decades confirmed that also relatively developed economies could be characterised with important disparities in this field, which can indicate that also developed countries can suffer form so called digital trap. Therefore, improving conditions for digital economy development and reducing disparities in this regard has been considered as an important objective for the European Union. This aim was stressed in the most important strategic documents of the EU such as the Europe 2020 plan. Building effective digital economy can be also a source of great potential for Central and Eastern European economies that face the problem of reducing their development gap to the old EU countries. The main objective of this article is to verify disparities concerning the digital economy development between new and old EU member states. As a result, the similarities between the European economies in digital economy development were analysed with application of the Ward’s clustering method. The current research showed not only expected disparities between new and old EU members, but also significant differences in the group of old EU countries. Form the policy perspective the article confirms structural development problems of the European Union economy, which can influence its future growth potential under global completion