According to the regular report on socioeconomic situation and development of regions of the European Union and candidate countries published in Brussels, Bratislava and Prague are the richest regions out of all the EU candidate countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The per capita gross domestic product exceeds 75 per cent of the EU average. In practice this assessment means that Bratislava in the case of Slovakia's membership of the EU could no longer receive assistance from the structural fund from which all the EU regions having their GDP below 75 per cent draw finance. The European Commission states in its report that the average GDP in the CEE candidate countries stands at as low as 40 per cent off that of the EU, for Latvia this being as low as 25 percent, Slovakia and Hungary 47 per cent and Slovenia as much as 67 per cent.