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[โ€“] 217 points 2 years ago (10 children)

These kinds of charts are a bit dangerous, as it will be used by anti-EU folk in net contributing countries to say look at how much money we can save when we leave the EU. But this looks only at money being shipped back and forth. The EU has so much benefits in terms of trade and collaboration, it's a steal at any price.

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  • [โ€“] 69 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    All people have to do to refute the leavers is point to the UK

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  • [โ€“] 22 points 2 years ago

    These people are usually reality deniers, so showing them anything is a no go.

    And you know how they do it too.

    First they do a whole FUD campaign, which get the people riled up and polarized. Up till the point that it doesn't matter what the truth is, it's tribalism, us against them etc. This phase is in full swing in Europe right now. Next they say well what if we do a non binding referendum? It shows the people we are actively taking an interest and we get to see what people think. If everyone votes remain, the issue is done and buried. Then leading up to the referendum they do a massive misinformation campaign, with TV ads, social media ads and posts, etc. Everything they can do to misinform the public, with Russia footing the bill for most of it. Most people aren't interested enough to dive into such a complex topic (and I don't blame them, it's very complicated), so they'll go off their gut and their gut is influenced by their experience in the world and on social media, so they will vote exit. After the referendum is done and the outcome is 50/50, they'll go yell: "THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN". And before you know it your whole country goes to shit and you are leaving the EU and basically committing economic suicide. By the time people realize what happened, it's much too late and all the shitbags responsible have gone away.

    If you told me this before Brexit, I would have laughed and told you it's total BS. But then it happened in real life and I don't know how to deal with that.

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  • [โ€“] 69 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    Not surprised about Hungary, but hoooly FUCK, what's going on in Poland?

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  • [โ€“] 68 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It's a big country with large regions that are still comparatively poor and agricultural. The latter two factors are what the EU pays for and the first works as a multiplicator.

    Per capita it looks a bit different. According bpd.de the main recipient per capita in 2022 was Estonia with 677 Euros per capita and year and the main contributor is indeed Germany with 237 Euros. Poland "only" gets 279 Euros per person and year.

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Agriculture is a great point overlooked in this chart.

    EU puts a lot of money into this, and Poland being a great exporter for this, they also receives alot from EU to be able to do this.

    Why are we doing it then, if it's a net negative? It's not, because we can all get our bread (literally) this way. And Poland farmers can make a living making the country richer.

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    [โ€“] 36 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Would be nice to have the same data per capita.

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  • [โ€“] 33 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

    statistia-netcontrib.csv

    country,netcontrib
    DE,25572
    FR,12380
    NL,6929
    IT,3337
    SE,2826
    DK,1766
    AT,1540
    FI,1109
    IE,703
    MT,-14
    CY,-172
    SI,-386
    EE,-729
    LT,-860
    SK,-1398
    LV,-1544
    BG,-1727
    HR,-1746
    ES,-1946
    LU,-2020
    CZ,-2853
    BE,-2950
    PT,-3132
    RO,-4096
    HU,-4206
    GR,-4278
    PL,-11910
    

    eu-contribution-per-capita.r

    if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
    pacman::p_load(
                countrycode,
                dplyr,
                ggdark,
                ggplot2,
                r2country
            )
    
    abs <- read.csv("statista-netcontrib.csv",header = TRUE)
    abs2 <- cbind(abs,name = countrycode(abs$country,"iso2c","country.name")) 
    
    df <- inner_join(country_names, abs2)
    df2 <- inner_join(country_population, df)
    df2$percap <- df2$netcontrib/df2$population2023*1000000
    
    df3 <- arrange(df2,percap)
    
    ggplot(df3, aes(x = percap, y = reorder(name, percap))) +
        geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
        dark_theme_gray() +
        ylab("Country") +
        xlab("Euros per capita") +
        scale_x_continuous(breaks = scales::pretty_breaks(n = 20)) +
        geom_text(aes(label = percap))
    
    ggsave("euros-percap.png")
    

    Full size image

    Sorry about the broken escaping of the angle brackets (โ€œ<โ€ is โ€œ&lt;โ€) in the source; Lemmy is, regrettably, broken on that at the moment.

    EDIT: Fixed Latvia country code error.

    EDIT2: And Austria country code error.

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  • [โ€“] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Also, a Markdown table rendition:

    eu-contribution-per-capita-markdown.r

    if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
    pacman::p_load(
                countrycode,
                dplyr,
                r2country,
                simplermarkdown
            )
    
    abs &lt;- read.csv("statista-netcontrib.csv",header = TRUE)
    abs2 &lt;- cbind(abs,name = countrycode(abs$country,"iso2c","country.name")) 
    
    df &lt;- inner_join(country_names, abs2)
    df2 &lt;- inner_join(country_population, df)
    df2$percap &lt;- df2$netcontrib/df2$population2023*1000000
    
    df3 &lt;- arrange(df2,-percap)
    
    md_table(df3)
    

    name percap
    Netherlands 386.91124
    Germany 302.86855
    Denmark 297.09908
    Sweden 267.98643
    Finland 199.90810
    France 181.71677
    Austria 168.68113
    Ireland 136.52768
    Italy 56.76638
    Malta -26.94577
    Spain -40.25217
    Slovenia -182.27546
    Cyprus -187.34343
    Romania -214.99549
    Belgium -250.73894
    Slovakia -257.60767
    Bulgaria -267.84703
    Portugal -299.21568
    Lithuania -300.05251
    Poland -315.86485
    Greece -408.10926
    Hungary -438.25808
    Croatia -449.01298
    Estonia -533.72029
    Latvia -819.79399
    Luxembourg -3056.85909
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  • [โ€“] 11 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    statistia-netcontrib.csv is using some weird country code that isn't ISO 3166-2, because it's got what I assume to be Latvia with the code LA which is actually Laos, and that's reflected on your chart too โ€“ I was initially a bit puzzled as to why Laos was listed as being in the EU. At a quick glance it seems to be the only weird one though

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  • [โ€“] 20 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    When you look closely, the most undemocratic of them are also taking the most money...

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  • [โ€“] 14 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    The only truly undemocratic country on that list is Hungary.

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  • [โ€“] 15 points 2 years ago (6 children)
  • [โ€“] 13 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    We'll see, they just got a new governemnt, I hope the best for them.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Hoping for the best and preparing for the wost is the way of life.

    As of now they are undemocratic as hell.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 2 years ago

    New PM is pro eu and the coalition is democratic. A lot of the judiciary corruption that happened is going to get reversed fast.

    Day to day it's not really undemocratic, it was mostly about popular issues to solidify right wing outrage.

    Still, I'm glad it's over.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    We're there elections in Poland recently? What were the results?

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  • [โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago

    Right "won" but progressives have a majority coalition that just elected a PM. We should be ok.

    It's not all in leftism, but they are in the government, first time since before WW2.

    In previous elections "left" was just previous regime surviviors.

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    [โ€“] 17 points 2 years ago

    Poland and hungary are constantly complaining about the EU and vetooing laws too

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  • [โ€“] 15 points 2 years ago

    Interesting. The red bars almost exclusively belong to nations that had authoritarian single party government in the last half century.

    When laid out like this you really see how deviating and long term the consequences of authoritarianism can be. Stable healthy democracy is a fucking superpower.

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  • [โ€“] 13 points 2 years ago

    I'm Polish. So, if I understand this correctly, we are getting the most out of the EU, and yet still people here are complaining about it. And about Germany.

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  • [โ€“] 11 points 2 years ago (6 children)
  • [โ€“] 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Both host import EU institutions. The income they provide for the locals, possibly indirectly, is also seen as a benefit.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Strasbourg in France should also make a dent into France's contributions then. Would be nice to know how much it would be, without those things calculated in - sure they are?

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  • [โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago

    Would be interesting to see this info per capita.

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  • [+] 1 point 2 years ago
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