, Columnist
Sex, Drugs and Accounting in Europe
As more countries adopt new EU rules that will include illegal activities such as the sex and drug trades in their GDP calculations, those numbers lose the last shreds of meaning.
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Europe has a new source of economic growth. In the next few months all European Union countries that do not already include drugs, prostitution, and other illegal and gray-market businesses in their gross domestic product calculations will have to do so.
The 2010 version of the European System of Accounts becomes obligatory for GDP reporting by EU member states in September. It states unequivocally that "illegal economic actions shall be considered as transactions when all units involved enter the actions by mutual agreement. Thus, purchases, sales or barters of illegal drugs or stolen property are transactions, while theft is not."