Has it been effective though? The EU used to have a bigger GDP than the USA in 2008 now the USA is over 50% larger. Member nations are still dragging their feet on doing much of anything in the Draghi report and it's unclear if that will ever change.

> Has it been effective though?

At what specifically?

At preventing another European war? Up until very recently, pretty good. No more world wars as of yet, but 80 years has past since the last, everyone with memories of how horrible it was, are almost gone, so I guess we're building up to another one. I'm hoping that at least Europe sticks together if it gets down to it.

I'm not sure why GDP is such an important indicator to you, it's just the value of goods and services, what purpose is that supposed to serve?

USA keeps getting a larger GDP you say, yet the population at large seems to be getting poorer, education and health care gets worse, and people finding it harder and harder to find somewhere to live. So what good does a high GDP actually give you in the world today?

This is a commonly cited stat but it is mostly an exchange rate phenomenon that disappears when you adjust for purchase power. If you go by comparing GDP in dollars the EU recovered almost half this gap last year simply from the dollar dropping in value.