During the recent Rio Olympics, many people have noticed that if EU member states had competed together under the EU flag, they would have largely dominated the medals table. That does not take into account the fact that, in most disciplines, each country can only send a maximum of two athletes.
But the countries that today form the EU have participated in most Summer Olympic Games, ever since their creation in 1896. That year, only seven of the ten participating countries are current EU members.
While the map represents EU members on the basis of the number of gold medals won snce 1896 – the ranking generally reported in the press – the table below, based on data collected by Wikipedia and updated after the Rio Games, shows the number of gold, silver and bronze medals won by each current EU country since the first Summer Games. Germany clearly dominates the rankings, whereas Malta has never won an Olympic medal and Cyprus has only won a single silver medal (at London 2012).