President of the Bratislava region Juraj Droba stated during the CoR plenary December that the debate on the necessity of going “beyond GDP” has been present in international discourse for quite some time and that it is no secret that his region "is one of the most vocal promoters of this initiative". 

Broadly supported by EU institutions, the OECD or the United Nations, Mr Droba also adheres to the view that " GDP is not the right tool to measure the state of development of states, regions or cities". To back up his argument, Juraj Droba referred to the EU Social Progress Index that the European Commission has invested a lot of energy and finance in to develop – "an alternative approach for measuring the development of regions".

Based on GDP, Bratislava Region has been ranked among the most developed EU regions for more than a decade, which Mr Droba describes as having had "serious consequences" for the territory and people, such as limited access to EU funds that is resulting in the "deepening of the modernisation gap of the region". However, based on the EU Social Progress Index the Bratislava region is classified 181 out of 272 regions. "So we simply cannot accept the argument of the Commission that Bratislava is as rich as Vienna and that we must be able to deal with our problems on our own and have our funding cut", deplored the ECR Vice-President.  

The case of the Bratislava Region proves that GDP level does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with the complex development of the territory. It is a region that is facing serious structural challenges "that have negative impact not only on lives of our inhabitants, but also on lives of those beyond its borders", highlighted Mr Droba. "We must once and for all move away from the GDP narrative and start focusing on what matters to people", he concluded.