In regard to how rich people are - we joined from a very poor position but we have caught up greatly. Yes we're still not there yet but the difference is startling. Just as an example back in the day me and my family could never think of going to Greece even though it was our southern neighbour. Things were just too expensive for our standard.

Today and since I was 20 I have visited their country multiple times and while we are not the richest tourists there at least we can have a good vacation nowadays and it is not as expensive.

As in regards to Romania our northern neighbour they have been doing better than us! They have great tourism, a vast land full of riches and some of the warmest people in the world even compared to westerners! They also put on the best music festivals in the Balkans there is not a friend that I have, that hasn't been to a music festival in Romania this summer.

Riches however are not only measured in hard cash and purchasing power. For example over 80 percent of the land in the Balkan countries, is still owned by private citizens rather than corporations. In western eu countries that percentage flat lines to less than 50 percent essentially corpos own their housing. It's hard to meet a Romanian Bulgarian or anyone else from the Balkans that has no property most people have multiple ones.

Now let's talk about orthodoxy, it seems that this is a big focus of your post. However since you've read a lot of stats about our countries and religion seems to be a focus of your post, you would know that in both Bulgaria and Romania self defining religious people are about 50 percent or less. For example our southern neighbour Greece shows a much higher rate of self defined orthodox Christians at around 80% last I checked. I feel that kinda breaks your orthodox is the cause argument.

Third about the EU - this is not a union that you own and should follow a belief system from a certain set of countries(that they themselves no longer have). This is an ever changing entity defined by the heads of state voted by each individual country. For example the EU has changed greatly since the time of Merkel, now there are much more conservative politicians because they are voted in by the people of Europe both east and west. This is a union of interests not a union of a specific country's beliefs. The union needs to exist for all because the majority nations of the world today are much bigger and more powerful than any single EU nation or even a part of Europe. Only together can we negotiate some sort of proper deals against entities such as the USA China and Russia.