In the last funding period, 2007–2013, 175 billion euros were earmarked in structural funds for Eastern Europe, 67 billion euros for Poland alone.14 The Czechs received 26.7 billion euros, and 25.3 billion went to the Hungarians. Across the region, the EU’s money was sufficient to fund between 7 and 17 percent of gross fixed capital formation over a seven-year period. The sums that were poured into the new member states in Eastern Europe by Brussels were comparable in scale to the famous Marshall Plan launched in 1947 to rescue ruined postwar Western Europe.
