the EU just got bigger today…hmm…that must mean that switzerland just got smaller, if we look at it from the other side of the fence.
question: how much smaller did switzerland get?
answer 1: before 1st may we had 15 EU members, so switzerland’s political “size” was about 6%…now we have 25 members, hence, its “size” has dropped to 4%, a loss of 40%.
answer 2: according to the eu enlargement website the 10 new EU members contribute about 105 million citizens, that’s 475 million after (and 370 million before)…so, switzerland has about 7.4 million (rounding up) …meaning that before it was population-wise about 2% the size of the EU, after it’s at 1.56%…a shrinkage of 22%.
answer 3: also, again according to the eu enlargment website before 1st may, the EU was about 3’154 thousand sq km, switzerland is about 42 thousand, which comes out at about 1.3% the size of the EU before…the EU grew by about 34% area-wise, which means switzerland now is about 1% the size of the EU…a loss of 25%.
so, over night switzerland became between 22% smaller population wise, 25% smaller area wise and 40% smaller political.
unfortunately, my taxes will probably stay the same ;=)
