The Swiss Confederation was founded in 1291, encompassing at first only three cantons. The Swiss Confederation obtained its independence from the Holy Roman Empire in 1499. Switzerland's neutrality has long been honored by the major European powers, and the country was not involved in either of the two World Wars of the twentieth century. The independence of the country is patent in the fact that it did not join the European Union, and only in 2002 did it become a member of the United Nations. Switzerland's per capita GDP is larger than that of the big Western European economies.