EU economic benefit questioned

The economic benefits of European integration may have been more modest than claimed by its more fervent proponents, according to an eminent economist who questions how far liberalisation depended on the political process. European incomes would have been about 5 per cent lower if the European Union did not exist, Barry Eichengreen, professor at the University of California, Berkeley concludes in a paper co-authored by Andrea Boltho at Oxford University.

CEPR Discussion Paper, No.6820, May 2008: The economic impact of European integration http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~eichengr/econ_impact_euro_integ.pdf

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