The Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy remain EU's net contributors

The report "Allocation of 2002 EU Operating Expenditure by Member State", released by the Commission in September, states that total expenditures from the EU budget amounted to 85 billion euro in 2003, 73 billion of which went to final beneficiaries in the Member States.

Some of the main findings of the report are:

• 10 of the 15 Member States were net contributors in 2002, four were net receivers. For Finland the balance was zero.
• As percentage of their Gross National Income (GNI), the largest net contributions were paid by the Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy. Without benefiting from its special correction, the UK would be the second biggest net contributor after the Netherlands.
• The specific correction mechanism on the revenue side for the UK had in 2002 the value of 4,9 billion euro.
• The largest net beneficiaries are Spain, Greece and Portugal and Ireland, the cohesion countries.
• In absolute amounts, Spain is the largest recipient of EU expenditure (around 21 per cent of total expenditure) followed by France. Germany is a very close third largest recipient.
• In relation to their GNI, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain remain by far the biggest recipients. Funds from the EU budget amounts for these States to between 3.3 and 2.2 per cent of their GNI respectively.
• Germany, France, Italy and the UK were the largest payers in 2002, measured in absolute amounts. Germany paid around 22.8 per cent of the total EU budget, followed by France with 18.2 per cent, Italy with 14.5 per cent and the UK with 13.1 per cent.