The centralist approach disregards the vast discrepancies in economic performance among EU countries – and ignores the fact that one finds more economic success stories among Europe’s smaller countries than among its large ones. Within the eurozone, cumulative GDP growth since 2008 has ranged from –23.6% in Greece to 5.2% in Slovakia; outside the eurozone, it has ranged from –4.1% in the United Kingdom to 12.5% in Poland.