Getting from Lisbon to Warsaw

The goal of joining the European Union is now tantalizingly close for many central and Eastern countries. The bigger question is what kind of EU are they joining? For much of the past decade, policy-makers and business leaders in the candidate countries have assumed accession is a sure-fire path to economic prosperity. In fact, the EU has under-performed badly for the last decade or so. GDP per head in the US, for example, is now 50 per cent higher than the EU average.