Northwestern Bulgaria ranks yet again as the poorest EU region, according to data of the EU statistical office.

According to Eurostat data for 2008, income of private households per capita (in purchasing power consumption standards — PPCS) in Bulgaria's Severozapaden region is 3 648 PPCS, compared to 36 805 PPCS in Inner London (UK), which means that there is a factor of 10.1:1 between the top and bottom of the ranking.

Eurostat's factsheet further informs that this is a smaller range than for regional GDP, where the corresponding factor is 13.2 : 1.

An in-depth analysis of the income ranking shows that the top 20 regions are spread over seven Member States.

This group contains seven regions in Germany and six in the UK, along with two each in Belgium and Italy, and one each in France, the Netherlands and Sweden.

The 20 regions at the tail end of the ranking are all located in the new Member States.

Eurostat also draws attention to the trend for a considerable geographical concentration: the list contains seven of the eight Romanian regions and all six Bulgarian regions, along with six of the 16 Polish and one of the seven Hungarian regions.

In 2008, the highest and lowest primary incomes per capita in the EU regions differed by a factor of 10.1: 1, while eight years earlier, in 2000, this factor had been 14.3.

According to EU expert, this shows that the gap between the opposite ends of the distribution narrowed considerably over the period 2000-2008, due to both the dynamic catch-up process in Bulgaria and Romania and below-average income growth in many wealthier areas of the EU.