The data includes the government expenditure centralization (GEC) ratio in percent that has been
centred with respect to country average in order to remove the differences in absolute values of
GEC.
The GEC ratio is the ratio of central government expenditure to the total general government expenditure.
Data were collected from the Eurostat (2018) database.
Only those European countries were included, where the data were available from 1995 to 2016 without
interruption. Finally, 29 countries were classified into three groups in the following way:
Group 1: Countries joining EC between 1958 and 1986 (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany
(until 1990 former territory of the FRG), Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal,
Spain, United Kingdom. These countries have long history of European integration, representing the
core of integration process.
Group 2: Countries joining the EU in 1995 (Austria, Sweden, Finland) and 2004 (Malta, Cyprus),
except CEEC (separate group), plus highly economically integrated non-EU countries, EFTA members
(Norway, Switzerland). Countries in this group have been, or in some case even still are standing
apart from the integration mainstream. Their level of economic integration is however very high.
Group 3: Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC), having similar features in political
end economic history. The process of economic and political integration have been initiated by
political changes in 1990s. CEEC joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia,
Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, data for Croatia joining in 2013 are
incomplete, therefore not included).
This grouping is used in examples.