The EU budget

With the news just in of a government rebellion over the proposed increase to our contribution to the EU budget perhaps a summation of the current budget situation as derived from the information contained within the "EU budget at glance" [sic].

Contained here is the contribution of each member and how much is essentially returned to the country. Plugging the fields into a spreadsheet what's the outcome.

The country that gets the most back is... Lithuania. They contribute 257.4m Euros and receives 1,652.8m Euros; that's 642%. They are closely followed by Hungary who contributes 836.4m Euros and receives 5,330.9m Euros; 637%

The country that gets the least back is... The Netherlands who contribute 3,933.3m Euros and receives 2,064.3m Euros or 52%. In second place is the UK contributing 11,273.4m Euros and receiving 6,570m Euros or 58%.

But we get a rebate; if we didn't we'd be contributing 14,869.3m Euros which would mean a return of 44% putting us in last place.

If that wasn't enough if all the contributions and spends are added up the EU has a 14% overspend equal to 14,120.1m Euros. So how much more is being spent on the EU functions themselves?

And they want a 5% increase.

Also of interest is the report regarding this from the BBC that states we are "one of 12 EU members which makes a net contribution to the EU budget" except using the EU's own figures we're one of 9 and that the "UK's net contribution was 7.25bn euros" except, again using their own figures, it's 4.7034bn Euros.

So whose figures do we believe; the EU's or the EU's?