As a half Croat: sorry, won't happen. Croatia's economy is tourism dominated and will stay that way. There is a bit of agriculture and industry (especially shipbuilding), but nowhere enough to compete with heavyweights such as Germany.
For those out of the loop: the Balkans have historically suffered from brain drain - first during the Yugoslavia era where many fled/emigrated from realcommunism, then during the wars for obvious reasons, and now simply because Germany and other EU nations pay way better and those who don't find work in tourism find it elsewhere in Europe instead. Good luck finding a nurse on the Balkans... Germany has to recruit from the Philippines meanwhile.
The fact that Croatian (and other Balkan countries') politics are extremely corrupt doesn't help much either, it's really sad.
Regarding Southern Italy: similar situation re/ brain drain, plus the added complexity of having to deal with the Mafiya.
Regarding Turkey: Turkey already is an economic powerhorse and a regional hard-power leader - the early Erdogan years showed what Turkey is capable of. Unfortunately Erdogan turned into Erdolf and investors are pretty much shying away from Turkey as a result of the instability, not to mention that Turkey is directly adjacent to the Syria cluster-fuck.
And it has little to do with "progressive" minds, and everything to do with opportunity. I personally have known Croatians of all politics who have left the country due to lack of opportunity, not because they were progressive.
Also, leaving the country because of lack of opportunity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Related: Turkey is not an economic powerhouse at all. You can't have such a fragile economy and still be called that. You think Erdoğan keeps poking at sensitive matters because he has power to do so? Those are just distractions.
The question is whether brain drain, crime, and corruption are due to incurable pathologies or symptoms of transient disadvantages.
How? There isn't much trade between Africa/Arabia and Europe other than oil, some agricultural products and used cars/outright waste.
> The natural beauty that attracts tourism can help repatriate the talented diasporas.
That's already the case in Croatia, many pensioners who worked in richer European countries retire back in Croatia because they can "live like kings" from pensions that would barely fetch a 1br micro apartment otherwise. For 500€ you can get a 75 m² flat in the center of Rijeka - in Munich that would be around 1500-2000€.
And those in working age... it's rare for them to return to their homelands for that reason.
> The question is whether brain drain, crime, and corruption are due to incurable pathologies or symptoms of transient disadvantages.
Neither, in my opinion. "Incurable pathologies" is bordering on racism, but it aren't "transient" issues on the other side. What's needed is massive amounts of wealth redistribution across Europe, combined with throwing the whole lot of political elites into jail (and that's also sadly valid for Germany, just look at Andreas Scheuer or the MPs who allegedly got huge kickbacks for anti-corona masks).
Basically Europe would need something like what the US did post-1945: a complete clean-up. Absent that, I'd also accept a revolution of the masses, but that isn't on the pipelines anywhere except in France...
Adam Smith not only promoted specialization but also extending the "reach" of trade. Politicians have the power to ruin things but they only succeed when riding the coat-tails of talented makers. I'd focus on promoting the makers rather than punishing past ruiners. Nihilism is never the answer.
Who builds the next startup, starts a franchise chain or scouts investors to build a new machine, if you can always double your salary by serving rich foreigners?
It's sort of a Dutch disease [1]. I've seen it happening from afar to Barcelona, which was on route to become what Berlin now is in terms of IT/programming back in ~2005-2006 but the ever increasing rent prices caused by tourism put an end to that (plus the 2008-2010 crisis, of course, which hit Spain especially hard). I had expected the same thing to happen to Amsterdam, but it looks like it managed to hold up better.
Well... many of the German tourists only come to Amsterdam for smoking pot on a day or weekend trip, and the French additionally for a night in the brothels since sex work is banned in France, so all you need is a lot of cheap hotels with beds, no stuff like beach resorts or other... more high-class venues to deal with these people.
Additionally, over the last years many of the "coffee shops" (weed shops) have closed down - in the early 2000s there were 280+ in Amsterdam, now there are 166. The government wants to introduce a "weed pass" that's only for Dutch citizens to further crack down on weed tourism: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/corona-coffeeshops-101.htm...
Hawaii's education suffers dramatically because the work is all in tourism - this is firsthand knowledge from teachers I know over there.