Nowdays, competitiveness has, more than ever, an economic meaning, based on its major influence on public and private institutions behavior, new jobs, long-term policyes and investments. In a global economy, market attractiveness makes the difference between evolution and economic stagnation and aware of this stakes, the European Union tries constantly to improve its general competitiveness. The main goal of this paper is to determinate the general competitiveness index of the entire European Unioin, how can it be improved by increasing the economic and political role of EU regions and if european policies encourage this bottom-up development of the competitivness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]