The aim of our paper was to construct a model of economic growth determinants
for old and new EU and the EU28 countries. We used a strongly balanced panel
in the period from 2000 to 2020 and regression equations. For the old EU
group, our results showed a high level of statistical significance and a
positive effect of gross fixed capital formation, trade openness, government
consumption, and population on GDP growth during the observation period. In
the new EU group, trade openness, political stability, and government
consumption are significant and positively affect economic growth. When we
included the moment of accession of new EU members in the analysis, our
results showed that gross fixed capital formation, trade openness, political
stability, and government consumption had a statistically significant and
positive influence on the GDP growth rate. Interestingly, our results did
not confirm the expected positive impact of foreign direct investments and
renewable energy consumption on economic growth in our sample countries. We
found that the crisis is statistically significant and negatively affected
the GDP growth rate in both groups with a stronger impact in new EU
countries. We conclude our article with policy implications and
recommendations for future research.
