0.5460% (yes.. little more than half a percent) from 2003 to 2004, it will be equal to the EU's GDP. The US econ did grow by more than that much in 2004. Also, I don't consider the CIA to be a good source for this data. They most likely did not gather it for themselves (even if they did, why trust them with the World Bank is a much more authoritative source for econ info?), but instead reaggregated someone else's data. To me, the World Bank is the authoritative source. On their tables , they don't show the EU at all, and only list the EMU at the very end of the data with other super-regional groupings.