Which member state contributed the most to EU GDP? And what does GDP actually mean?
Gross domestic product (GDP) is an indicator used to measure the size and performance of an economy. It provides information on the value of goods and services produced during a given period. Within the EU, GDP was valued at €17.0 trillion in 2023.
In 2023, slightly less than a quarter of the EU’s GDP was generated by Germany (24.3%), followed by France (16.5%) and Italy (12.3%), ahead of Spain (8.6%) and the Netherlands (6.1%).
Nice implicit population visualization. Per capita might be more revealing.
Why is Greece abbreviated as EL and not GR? Seems to be a general EU thing.
Seems to me that it’s the national country code just like DE for Germany, SE for Sweden and ES for Spain.
But DE, SE, and ES are the official two-digit ISO 3166 country codes for Germany, Sweden, and Spain, respectively. The ISO 3166 country code for Greece is GR, not ES.
However, el is the official ISO 639 language code for the Greek language (lowercase, not uppercase!). So for some reason, someone decided to use the uppercase Greek language code to denote the country of Greece. (the two-digit ISO 639 language code for Sweden is sv, so it’s not even consistent)
As /u/Successful_Try543@feddit.org pointed out, they apparently use the VAT identification number for this image.
I’m going to take a wild guess that this is also pretty close to the population share.
Soemwhat:
Country | Population(2024-01-01) | Population(% of EU) |
---|---|---|
Germany | 83,445,000 | 18.6% |
France | 68,402,000 | 15.2% |
Italy | 58,989,700 | 13.1% |
Spain | 48,610,500 | 10.8% |
Poland | 36,621,000 | 8.2% |
Romania | 19,064,400 | 4.2% |
Netherlands | 17,942,900 | 4.0% |
Belgium | 11,832,000 | 2.6% |
Czech Republic | 10,900,600 | 2.4% |
Portugal | 10,639,700 | 2.4% |
Sweden | 10,551,700 | 2.3% |
Greece | 10,397,200 | 2.3% |
Hungary | 9,584,600 | 2.1% |
Austria | 9,158,800 | 2.0% |
Bulgaria | 6,445,500 | 1.4% |
Denmark | 5,961,200 | 1.3% |
Finland | 5,603,900 | 1.2% |
Slovakia | 5,424,700 | 1.2% |
Ireland | 5,343,800 | 1.2% |
Croatia | 3,862,000 | 0.9% |
Lithuania | 2,885,900 | 0.6% |
Slovenia | 2,123,900 | 0.5% |
Latvia | 1,871,900 | 0.4% |
Estonia | 1,374,700 | 0.3% |
Cyprus | 933,500 | 0.2% |
Luxembourg | 672,100 | 0.1% |
Malta | 563,400 | 0.1% |
European Union | 449,206,600 | 100.0% |
Sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_member_states_by_population
Hungary is so small yet so troublesome.
Would have been funny to add Russia, which has a smaller GDP than Germany…
There are only 3 countries with a higher GDP than Germany, idk if this is a fair comparison.
As of 2024 only two thanks to the bad performance of Japan. But India will probably take Germany’s place in the near future.
Not to disagree with your general point, but I think it would be progress if we got away from labelling low GDP growth as “bad”. GDP is one measure among many others, with plenty of weaknesses, not least that the competition for it is zero-sum and unsustainable. But it has become a fetish because economists. IMO if we’re going to obsess over a single metric, HDI is a much better candidate.