Plus the wars they had to name a few: Balkan, WWI, Spanish Civil War, WWII. Add to that a few dozen other smaller wars. Quite a mess and quite impressive to overcome in such a short time and not hate each other.
>30 years and the disproportionality is pretty consistent.
It's really not, the gap has been shrinking.
It's not. EE countries were under 30% of EU's PPP GDP per capita, and are over 60% now.
Sure and according to the news California still is.