> on the tax base that would match a very small European country
What are you counting as very small? They have 3-4 times the population of the like of Denmark, Belgium and Portugal. They're comparable with Spain and Poland, which few people would consider very small European countries.
> country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure
This brings some challenges, but infrastructure doesn't scale 1:1 with the land area of a country, 99% of the infrastructure can be on 1% of the land area and serve most people. It's the urbanization level that matters, not the geography.
What are you counting as very small? They have 3-4 times the population of the like of Denmark, Belgium and Portugal. They're comparable with Spain and Poland, which few people would consider very small European countries.
> country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure
This brings some challenges, but infrastructure doesn't scale 1:1 with the land area of a country, 99% of the infrastructure can be on 1% of the land area and serve most people. It's the urbanization level that matters, not the geography.