The EU in numbers

What the figures mean

National contribution to the EU budget

What the country paid into the EU budget from its national treasury: the GNI-, VAT- and plastic-based own resources, with balances and adjustments. Excludes customs duties.

Total EU spending in the country

Everything the EU spent in the country that year: EU budget spending plus NextGenerationEU recovery money.

EU budget spending in the country

EU budget money spent in the country that year, across all programmes, excluding NextGenerationEU. Belgium and Luxembourg include the running costs of EU institutions based there.

NextGenerationEU spending in the country

Recovery money paid in the country under NextGenerationEU, mostly Recovery and Resilience Facility grants. It is financed by EU borrowing and reported separately from the rest of the budget.

Population on 1 January

Resident population on 1 January, as published by Eurostat.

Contribution per person

National contribution divided by the population on 1 January of the same year.

Total EU spending per person

Total EU spending in the country, NextGenerationEU included, divided by its population on 1 January.

Contribution as a share of GNI

National contribution as a percentage of gross national income, using the GNI figures published with the Commission dataset.

Customs duties collected for the EU

Duties on imports from outside the EU, collected by the country and passed to the EU budget; member states keep 25% of what they collect to cover costs. Large ports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp raise the figures for the Netherlands and Belgium, because goods enter there for the whole EU.

Budget spending − contribution

EU budget spending in the country (excluding NextGenerationEU) minus its national contribution. A simple difference for orientation only. It is not the Commission’s official “operating budgetary balance”, which leaves out administrative spending and adjusts for other items.

Sources

• EU spending and revenue

  EU budget spending in each member state (excluding and including NextGenerationEU), national contributions, customs duties and GNI. Years used: 2022–2024. Latest year in the file: 2024.

  European Commission, DG Budget · Retrieved 20 September 2026

  Dataset file used (.xlsx)
• Population on 1 January (tps00001)

  Resident population on 1 January. Years used: 2022–2026.

  Eurostat · Updated by publisher 21 July 2026 · Retrieved 20 September 2026

  Eurostat copyright notice (free re-use with attribution)

Notes

• Money figures are in current euros, as published by the Commission, and are not adjusted for inflation.
• The Commission reports NextGenerationEU spending in a separate table from the rest of the budget. The dashboard shows both, and their sum as total EU spending.
• The EU-27 population is Eurostat’s own aggregate, which it marks as estimated. It can differ slightly from the sum of the national figures.
• 2026 is still in progress. Its population is the 1 January figure; its contributions and spending will only be known after the year ends.
• The Commission publishes each year’s contributions and spending the summer or autumn after the year ends. The next data refresh picks them up automatically.
• Population figures Eurostat marks as not final:
  • 2022: Portugal (break in series), Romania (estimated)
  • 2023: Germany (break in series), Latvia (break in series), Romania (estimated)
  • 2024: France (provisional), Romania (estimated)
  • 2025: France (provisional), Romania (estimated)
  • 2026: Belgium (provisional), Cyprus (provisional), France (provisional), Greece (estimated, provisional), Italy (provisional), Romania (estimated), Spain (provisional)
• Every figure on this page is generated from the sources above by npm run data:eu. Nothing is typed in by hand. All sources are also listed on the Sources page.