Twenty years on: Did joining the EU make new members richer?
Twenty years on: Did joining the EU make new members richer?
www.euronews.com /business/2025/11/03/twenty-years-on-did-joining-the-eu-make-new-members-richer
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As an (important?) side note: Europe is among the region with the highest equality, together with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Philippine, Papua New Guinea. Of course, there is a lot room for improvement, but inequality has not risen in the last 20 or so years - unlike in countries like Russia, China, India, where the gap between the richest and the poor has widen significantly.
Addition: Here is the data - https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p99p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO-PPP;QE-PPP;XR-PPP/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/12.912/100/curve/false/region
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Because it’s not worth engaging with this person I just copy paste my answer to the other place where they posted this.
Thanks for linking a source but this is a misleading interpretation, please don’t try to argue with data if you don’t know how to interpret it.
You need to look at e.g. the top 10%, middle 40% and bottom 50% to get a proper idea. And then look at it country by country because the scales don’t match. Yes, the USA are extremely inequal, I think back to like 1913 level in 2013 or something like that iirc, so if you put them on a plot with e.g. France, France will look great.
But if you look at France alone you get a different picture and inequality is rising again since the 80s. Here’s an article by a French economist with research focus on inequality which cites the same data: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2025/09/24/global-inequality-in-historical-perspective-part-1/
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Tldr: No. Look at Britain right now. It's finally flourishing.
!/s
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Had me in the first half 😭
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This is a confusing issue to me.
On one hand I understand the value of the EU to my country's (Portugal) development on the other I take real issue with how the influx of foreign capital has priced out most common workers from buying a house before they're 30/40, which directly impacts one's ability to start a family. Two of our greatest obstacles to wellbeing.
I love some initiatives like the tighter regulation on big tech, but fear the power of a supranational organisation over Portugal's democratic process. An organisation which is perceived as not so democratic.
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The same or at least similar increase in real estate prices has happened in non-EU countries around the world, and the primary beneficiaries are the local upper-class not the foreign investors. It is a complex topic, and EU regulation does play a role in it, but overall I would say that the EU isn't the primary driver behind this.
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I feel like the EU is beginning to experience some growth patterns that the USA experienced in the later 20th century where the was a mass migration towards the American Sunbelt in search of better weather and a lower cost of living. However, without the mass building that occurred in the USA during that time, the migration is causing housing unaffordability as working Portuguese families can't compete with northern pensioners.
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I don't know much about the American phenomenon you mentioned so I can't comment on that.
In Portugal we have more than 170,000 (state/private) empty houses. A fund of more than 100 million euros (and counting) for the renovation/construction of public/cooperative housing which has been collecting dust for 2 years now. We have the resources to fix this, but our politicians seem more preoccupied in punishing 10K people for being Muslim (they have valid concerns, wrong solutions)
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I'd attribute that problem to Portugal specifically though. Especially to the taxation policies that incentivized people to move to Portugal but without requiring them to specifically set up business in Portugal. This resulted into many people working in other countries to move to Portugal to pay lower taxation. This indeed increased prices, especially for rent but also in general, as those people had higher purchasing power but did not significantly increase salaries. There is a reason why Lisbon is the heaven of digital nomads. I hear things are changing, but I don't know too much about it. Indeed I know many people in Lisbon who work mostly in other countries. Sure they pay taxes, but that doesn't directly translate into higher paying jobs.
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The tax incentives for digital nomads are a big issue for sure. I love meeting digital nomads, always a fun conversation, I just don't understand why we should subsidize highly paid individuals looking for a cheap place to live for a while. They do not create roots or care much about the country they live in. If things go south they will leave and the people of the country they enjoyed will be burdened with all the issues.
I say we welcome all digital nomads if they wish to live with us, but they should pay their due like everyone else.
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Because at it's core, the EU is still a neoliberal organization that promotes business interests over public welfare. It exists to ensure giant corporations in Europes developed core can compete against massive non-European firms. The only reason they don't push for American levels of cruelty is that the people of the EU would riot and overthrow their governments if their hard earned benefits (universal healthcare, worker protections, pensions, mandatory vacations) were severely threatened.
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Every country should heavily tax non-resident property owners. They should also increasingly tax every property someone owns over 1, to the point that owning more than 3 homes becomes completely unrealistic for most and middle class landlords disappear.
Everyone should own their own residence (or have the opportunity to). Housing prices would collapse if they weren't being used as a financial vehicle for investments instead of housing that degrades without upkeep.
- Taxing the ultra-wealthy out of existence
- Taxing landlords out of existence
I believe those are every societies largest priorities.
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Why don't you just build more houses? That's what my country is doing to solve our problem.
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Great question.
We are building, although not enough, a lot of houses, unfortunately, a big chunk is high income/luxury housing and another big chunk is used as an investment vehicle which can sit idle for years even when it's placed in the middle of our biggest cities.
For some extra context I leave this excerpt from another comment:
In Portugal we have more than 170,000 (state/private) empty houses. A fund of more than 100 million euros (and counting) for the renovation/construction of public/cooperative housing which has been collecting dust for 2 years now. We have the resources to fix this, but our politicians seem more preoccupied in punishing 10K people for being Muslim (they have valid concerns, wrong solutions)
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Canada is building more houses? Since when?
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Ich bin ein großer Fan der EU, sehe mich selbst als Europäer first und Österreicher second aber man darf eines trotzdem nicht vergessen:
Mit dem gestiegenen GDP kamen auchch die gestiegenen Lebenserhaltungskosten. Mietpreise, Lebensmittel etc.
Trotzdem würde ich nirgendwo anders als der EU leben wollen. (Allerhöchstens Norwegen)
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wat
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Sorry... thought I was on a german sub
My bad
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;tldr yes
who would have guessed that cooperation is the winning strategy 😯
not the far right at least