Member States with negative operating budgetary balances (2010-12)

Over time, the debate on the EU budget has focused more and more on budgetary balances. These measure the difference between contributions to and receipts from the EU budget for each Member State.
Apparently simple, the concept is highly controversial. Estimates of Member States’ budgetary balances are necessarily based on assumptions, including of the items to be considered in calculating revenues and payments. According to the Commission , “combining only the two or three most important assumptions […] produces no fewer than 30 to 40 perfectly defensible definitions of budgetary balances”, each of them giving different results – sometimes significantly so for smaller Member States. In many cases, it is difficult to identify the final beneficiary of funds with much precision. For example, Structural Funds are attributed to a Member State, but contracts implementing related projects may be awarded to companies from other Member States. Both students’ Member States of origin and the countries hosting these same students under Erasmus can reasonably be expected to benefit from the same funds.