Talk:European Union statistics

	European Union portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject European Union, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the European Union on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.European UnionWikipedia:WikiProject European UnionTemplate:WikiProject European UnionEuropean Union articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Suggestions[edit]

Suggestions: Show percentages/proportions. (ie: what percentage of the EU population is from Germany). For this to be feasible the table would have to be broken down into more than one table. -- Joolz 23:29, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Seems like we should show the proportion for the GDP as well. Parmaestro 21:23, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

- Ok, I've added some more statistics to the table, and tried to write some brief introductions. Are there any other areas we should consider covering? -- Joolz 01:12, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

- - Nice job. Maybe demographics should be added.

You haven't included the UK in any of the information - when we last looked the UK was still in the EU.

Just a thought but at the moment most of these statistics are focused on the member states of the EU in comparison to the other member states, we can also have statistics about the EU (perhaps in comparison to other entities/countries in the world, perhaps not) - trying to think of examples here, but position in population/area rankings etc, tourism, IT usage/infastructure, trading power (ie, votes on WTO, number of exports/imports) - I'm trying to think of ways to broaden the topic -- Joolz 19:04, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The statistics to date are not so much a comparison among the member states but rather the statistics for the European Union as a whole with a breakdown by member states. Comparisons with countries of the world would be good. Parmaestro 10:48, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Statistics from Eurostat...[edit]

Are we allowed to use data from Eurostat? The copyright notices are at [1] and [2]. I was planning to use their data for information regarding IT penetration etc, but I don't want to violate any copyright provisions, so I thought it best to check. -- Joolz 19:54, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, with the exception of the use of textual and multimedia information. Parmaestro 10:44, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by textual information... -- Joolz 12:14, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Inter alia sound, images, software Parmaestro 12:34, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Economy[edit]

I think the economy statistics would be better in Economy of the European Union than here. -- Joolz 12:19, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've been bold and removed the economy statistics to the economy of the European Union, I figure it's the best place for them. -- Joolz 21:18, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Net contributions[edit]

Does anybody have statistics on net contributions of each member state? (ie, contribution minus subsidies) --Khendon 12:41, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to do that but I couldn't find a source for them. We've got the total contributions which I found from eurostat (or the commission), it took me a while to actually work out what was actually going on with them, and I couldn't find the total subsidy (et al.) to each member state, else I'd have done that. -- Joolz 13:17, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The EU stopped providing estimates of country-scale net contributions/receipts about five years ago. It was thought that presenting the EU in terms of money-transfers gave a distorted view of the benefits of EU membership. The EU does still make such estimates (derivatives of them are used in various official documents); it's just that, for aspirational reasons, it no longer publishes them. It should also be noted that the official EU line is that the EU is not funded by contributions from its member-states, net or otherwise. The EU has its own funds: "Since the European Community is endowed with own resources, there are not strictly speaking any contributions by the Member States." Vinny Burgoo 20:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it did, but it seems to produce figures now for expenditure in each country by category. These are available at:[3]. This has figures for 2000-2006. My own problem is that the numbers are not the same as tabulated here for contributions from each country. A small discrepancy is quite undestandable since the figures are corrected retrospectively, but which years figures are actually supposed to be in the table now? This is a serious omission! Sandpiper 23:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As with the comment above about statistics relating to the economy, it seems to me that the statistics relating to income and expenditure in each state ought to be on the page Budget of the European Union? Sandpiper 01:04, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Positive or Negative[edit]

Ok, when you hear this you'll probably think it's stupid but I'll go ahead anyway.

Does anyone else think it might be helpful to include some sort of notation indicating whether or not a statistic is good or bad, i.e. whether its better to be at the top or better to be at the bottom. Because when I was reading some of them I found it a little difficult to tell which it was. - Gerbon689

I guess you mean the "Freedom and Governance-related rankings", 1 is good, 25 is bad :P I'll try and think of a way of wording it into the article, I'm not quite sure how yet, but to me it would kind of be like listing the results of a race and explaining that the one ranked one came first ;) -- Joolz

Oh, no it's just for most of them I realised that one was best, but it was just the Corruption one that I found a bit difficult to understand. - Gerbon689

I've added a sentence which will hopefully clear things up. -- Joolz 17:20, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having a bit of the same trouble with one or two of the tables too, in particular (but not exclusively) with 'freedom of press'. It would be good if it were included in the writiing which country and the best and which had the worst 'freedom of press'. Sort of like what is already included in the writing to go with 'income equality' would be gtood. Is it possible someone could please include this for all the other tables? Evil Eye 00:06, 31 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've added explanations to all the different measures now :) -- Joolz 18:28, 31 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just colour-coded most rankings; that should make it easier to quickly visualize a country's relative standing. Kroum 23:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Economic Freedom[edit]

in this section the paragraph list Ireland as the most free whereas the table lists the UK which is correct?

"Economic Freedom" is more of a rhetorical tool than objective measure. Freedom for whom? My sense is that this would more accurately be called "Pro-Business Rating" or "Level of Business Friendliness". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.99.41.50 (talk) 17:30, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Split into separate articles?[edit]

Would it be sensible to split this article into separate articles, one for each table?
Alternatively, just keep the first table, which is about the EU and split off the other tables, which compare EU states by different (not specifically EU) criteria?
--Boson 13:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

my guess is that this is a catch-all article for interesting statistics which don't have much else to say about them. Above I have suggested moving the budget statistics to the budget article. If there isn't anything else to go with a table, I would otherwise suggest leaving it here. Sandpiper 08:46, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]