WTF is up with Luxembourg on that graph?

It is a tax haven, with one of the highest GDP / person in the world, why is it, by magnitudes, the biggest recipient of EU largesse / person??!

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NoboruWataya 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I presume this is because of the EU institutions there and that expenditure to maintain those institutions counts towards receipts (and this effect is then exaggerated due to Luxembourg's small population). Certainly no one in the EU is under any illusion that Luxembourg is poor, much less vastly poorer than the next poorest EU country.

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FinnKuhn 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Lots of people who work in Luxembourg don't live there so anything "per capita" is a bit misleading.

Additionally a lot of the EU's institutions are based there or have offices there, some of which might count as investments as well.

Lastly, everything there is really expensive. So you need to invest a larger amount to achieve the same thing as elsewhere.

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Quarrel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

These are reasons why it might not be the largest provider of funds per capita, not why it would be by orders of magnitude the biggest recipient.

I have been to Luxembourg and to Hungary, Bulgaria & Greece - the otherwise obvious contenders for "poorest" in the EU and Luxembourg should not be in the picture.

	▲	SiempreViernes an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If it gets funds for restoring one railway bridge or something of that sort the fact the population is tiny makes the per capita investment look huge, just usual tiny country effects.

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swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A bunch of foreign companies also incorporate their EU subsidiaries there (presumably due to some tax benefit). I imagine that distorts their GDP quite badly as well.

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-mlv 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Small population plus lots of EU institutions.