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.
post
Not surprised about Hungary, but hoooly FUCK, what's going on in Poland?
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.
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.
War in Ukraine. A whole fuckload of people that seek asylum in Poland for obvious reasons.
Would be nice to have the same data per capita.
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")

Sorry about the broken escaping of the angle brackets (โ<โ is โ<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.
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 <- 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)
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 |
This is very clever. Is Lemmy actually running the code to achieve this, or did you paste it just so other people can replicate the process?
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
That's just me not knowing my country codes. Over here, "LA" is generally Los Angeles. I'll fix it; thanks.
EDIT: Also, Austria appears to be "AT" rather than "AU". One more fix.
When you look closely, the most undemocratic of them are also taking the most money...
The only truly undemocratic country on that list is Hungary.
Poland isn't much better
We'll see, they just got a new governemnt, I hope the best for them.
Hoping for the best and preparing for the wost is the way of life.
As of now they are undemocratic as hell.
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.
We're there elections in Poland recently? What were the results?
Isn't a rotten apple enough to spoil the whole basket? At least we have this proverb in my country...
Poland and hungary are constantly complaining about the EU and vetooing laws too
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.
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.
Luxembourg and Belgium?
Both host import EU institutions. The income they provide for the locals, possibly indirectly, is also seen as a benefit.
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?
Because the presence of the EU institutions this brings a lot of money in the economy
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