By Gunter Deuber in Vienna As the International Monetary Fund often likes to emphasise, the EU and EU integration is a comprehensive convergence machine for lots of European countries, some of which are lagging behind. This aspect is becoming very apparent once again in the wake of the upcoming 20th anniversary of the EU’s eastward enlargement in May 2004, when five Central European countries (Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland) plus the Baltic states, Cyprus and Malta joined the EU. Macroeconomic convergence: a success story, with love greetings from Western Europe Overall, t…