France and Austria was the two nations that i was slightly uncertain about. France suffers from having a very strong centralism where everything happens in Paris, whereas in both Germany and England (the other two nations in the context that is of comparable size) have many semi-autonomous centers of importance (Ruhr and Merseyside being the most prominent examples, with a number of less condensed centers spread across the nation such as Hamburg, Munich, Bristol and Newcastle). Just look at how Transportation networks are built up in the respective nations, where in Germany (and to a slightly lesser extent England), its a patchwork where everything can get from everywhere to everywhere, relatively direct. Then in France its obviously all centered on Paris with all lines going in and out of Paris, and few (if any) going between other major cities.
The UK is actually more capital-centric than France, judging by income differences between the capital and the rest of the country. Incomes in Northern England are on a par with those of East Germany and Southern Italy. Provincial France is poor, but not that poor. Judging by city sizes, the UK and France are about comparable - they have similar populations, and so do their capital regions; compare this with Italy and Germany and the difference will be clear. The UK has bigger secondary cities - Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds all have higher metro populations than Lyon - but those secondary cities are not economically successful, whereas Lyon is fairly high-income, if not so rich as Paris.
Also, lol at "France is like Southern Europe." France has higher labor productivity than most of Germanic Europe; its GDP per capita is lower purely because the French made a collective decision to work shorter hours, and overall incomes remain a cut above those of Italy, Spain, etc. Hell, even within Italy, the North isn't that much poorer than Germanic Europe, although the gap is increasing (there's a paper I can try to find out if anyone's interested, arguing that in recent years, Northern Italy's institutions have been degraded to become more like Southern Italy's rather than the reverse). Most of Romance Europe is not Southern Italy or Portugal.