Here's "a lower power"

ceiling(exp(log(c(EU.population, iceland=300000))/1.5)/3000)
    Germany	 France 	 UK	  Italy       Spain	 Poland 
	 64	     54 	 52	     51 	 43	     38 
    Romania Netherlands      Greece	Belgium    Portugal	Czechia 
	 26	     22 	 17	     17 	 17	     16 
    Hungary	 Sweden     Austria    Bulgaria     Denmark    Slovakia 
	 16	     15 	 14	     13 	 11	     11 
    Finland	Ireland   Lithuania	 Latvia    Slovenia	Estonia 
	 11	     10 	  8	      6 	  6	      5 
     Cyprus  Luxembourg       Malta	iceland 
	  3	      3 	  2	      2

for a total of 553 + EU-wide list. The problem I see with allowing flexibility in the power is that you will then get endless bickering as well as not having a clean a priori justification for the choice (which Penrose's square-root does have).

The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.