Romanians working in other EU member states transferred the second highest amount of money back home last year, data released by Eurostat earlier this week showed.
Eurostat releases annually the balance of personal money transfers both within the European Union and to non-EU countries, most of which is money sent home by persons working in a country other than their home country.
Transfers out to non-EU countries far outweighed inflows to the EU; the EU ending up with a negative balance of EUR 24.6 billion with the rest of the world. Intra-EU personal transfers, meanwhile, amounted to a significant EUR 15.5 billion.
For transfers within the EU, Portugal was the largest net beneficiary, with a positive balance of EUR 3.07 billion, followed by Romania with EUR 2.71 billion. Poland, whose population is double that of Romania (38 and 19 million), only had the third highest positive balance of EUR 2.54 billion.
In comparison, the money sent home by Hungarians was an almost negligible EUR 292 million.
As for the countries from where the money came, France had by far the highest negative balance of EUR 10.52 billion, followed by Germany with 5.14 billion, the UK with 4.66, and Italy with 4.51 billion.
Title image: Romanians in France (source: Roumains en France Facebook page)
