But you can't abandon PPP, our income goes a lot further than the typical European's. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

"[PPP] equalizes the purchasing power of different currencies in their home countries for a given basket of goods. Using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing differences in living standards on the whole between nations because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of different countries, rather than just a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) comparison."

And you're cherry picking unemployment figures, from particularly small countries.

E.g. go to http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&... and you'll see the 2009 November (September for the UK) rates for:

  EU:    9.5-10%

  France:  10.0%
  Italy:    8.3%
  Ireland: 12.9%
  Germany:  7.6%
  Spain:   19.4%
  UK:       7.8%

The above paints a rather different picture, doesn't it?