Experiment 02 · Data Visualization
EU Money Flows: Who Pays Into the EU Budget and Where the Money Goes
Twenty years of the EU budget on one globe. See what every member state paid in, what it got back, which policies the money paid for and how NextGenerationEU changed the picture from 2021.
What you can explore
One circle, one century, every country
Who pays, who receives
Arcs from every member state into Brussels and back. Countries are coloured from net contributor to net recipient.
Where the money goes
Follow the money from revenue sources such as GNI, VAT and customs to agriculture, cohesion, research and the other policy areas.
Your country, every year
Pick a country and a year, or look at 2006–2025 at once, in euros, as a share of the budget or as a share of national income.
- paid in by member states
- €2,664 bn
- spent by the EU budget
- €3,219 bn
- Germany, largest net contributor
- −€315 bn
- Poland, largest net recipient
- +€170 bn
The AI use case
How we built it with AI, step by step
From the Commission's spreadsheet to a live app: AI-assisted engineering with every number traceable to the official file.
Data spec
We mapped the Commission's budget headings from four budget periods to eight comparable policy areas and kept the official names.
Reproducible pipeline
One script reads the official XLSX, one sheet per year, and checks every year against the Commission's own totals.
Interactive app
A fast canvas globe with a flow chart, country panel and data tables. Parts of the globe you cannot see are not drawn.
Kept current
The Commission adds a year each September. The pipeline reruns and the range extends.
Sources and licences
European Commission, EU spending and revenue – Data 2000–2025 (XLSX, published 29 Sep 2026), sheets 2006–2025. Reuse with attribution.
“Paid in” = a member state's own resources (GNI, VAT, customs, plastic) plus corrections and adjustments. “Received” = EU spending allocated to that country. Net balance = received minus paid in; it differs from the Commission's operating budgetary balance.
Policy areas before 2021 are our mapping of the 2000–06, 2007–13 and 2014–20 headings. Each year's mapped areas add up to the sheet's total expenditure.
Map: Natural Earth via world-atlas (public domain and ISC). Today's borders throughout; no position on disputed territories.
Your Next Step
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