It's a very repetitive task to always cluster European Union Members States, but despite the heterogeneity in any possible group of clusters, it is probably the only way to have a basis for comparison.
My preferred clusters consist of the EU-15 and the New Member States, or Central and Eastern Europe. Within each group, we can further split up by broad welfare state or cultural groups. The syntax below for Stata should be self-explanatory.
gene byte eu28 = 0
replace eu28 = 1 if inlist(geo,"BE","DE","FR","AT","NL") // Continental Western Europe
replace eu28 = 2 if inlist(geo,"GB","IE") // British isles
replace eu28 = 3 if inlist(geo,"SE","FI","NO","DK") // Scandinavia
replace eu28 = 4 if inlist(geo,"ES","IT","PT","GR") // Southern Europe
replace eu28 = 5 if inlist(geo,"HU","PL","SI","SK","CZ") // CEE Slavic (and Hungary)
replace eu28 = 6 if inlist(geo,"LT","LV","EE") // CEE Baltic
replace eu28 = 7 if inlist(geo,"HR","RO","BG","CY","MT") // CEE Balkan and Mediterranean Isles
