[chris9991]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The EU15 comprised the following 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.

Given they were under communist rule for part of this period you'd have expected economic growth to improve as they were liberalised, surely?

This is the point, despite being rid of communism and the ever closer political unions the EU-15 continue to fail to keep pace with the rest of the world.

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I think you miss understand, I was really after the source of the data so that I could remove the latter members from the figures and look at only the states that have been members since 1973 - it would be the only fair way to look at the effects of the EU on GDP. Anyone can draw a chart to show what they like but I'm more keen in looking at the data. It is bit sad I know but I like to draw my own conclusions