Are European business cycles close enough to be just one?

We propose a comprehensive methodology to characterize the business cycle comovements across European economies and some industrialized countries, without imposing any given model but trying to 'leave the data speak'. We develop a novel method to show that there is no evidence of a 'European economy' that acts as an attractor to the other economies of the area. We show that the establishment of the Monetary Union has not significantly increased the level of comovements across Euro-area economies. Finally, we are able to explain an important proportion of the distances across their business cycles using macrovariables related to the structure of the economy, to the directions of trade, and to the size of the public sector.