Huge gap remains between EU's richest and poorest regions
London and Brussels feature as the richest EU regions, while the six poorest regions are all in Poland, according to new figures published on Thursday (18 May) by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office.
The economic power of the top region - Inner London and the bottom region in the ranking - Lubelskie in Poland - differed by 278 to 33 per cent of the union's average respectively.
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Out of the EU's 254 regions, 37 exceeded the 125 per cent level - with seven of them being in Germany, six in Italy and the UK, five in the Netherlands, three in Austria and two in Belgium and Finland.
The only new member state to feature in the group was the Czech Republic, with Prague recording 138 percent of the EU's average.
The countries from central and eastern Europe, which joined the block in 2004, dominate the lowest positions of the table, with sixteen Polish regions below 60 per cent of the EU's average, seven in the Czech Republic and six in Hungary.
The lowest ranked region amongst the old member states was Norte in Portugal (57%), while several poorer regions can be found in Greece, Italy and Germany, as well as overseas departments of France.
The survey is based on the 2003 GDP per inhabitant figures which are expressed in terms of purchasing power standards and it monitors the total economic activities of a region.