Structure of EU own resources (1981-2011)

The financing of the EU budget comes from the three categories of own resources:
– Traditional own resources, mainly customs duties, represented 13% of total revenue in 2011. MS retain 25% of the amounts established as collection costs.
– VAT resource accounted for 11% of total revenue in 2011. Based on a very complex statistical calculation, its link to the VAT collected in MS is very weak.
– GNI resource, the “budget balancing element”, represented around 70% of total revenue (2011).
Other revenue, which is not classified as own resources, includes taxes on EU staff salaries, contributions from non-EU coun-tries to certain programmes, and fines on companies for breaching competition law.