Personal transfers: €50.9 bn sent outside EU in 2023

In 2023, flows of money sent by EU residents to non-EU countries, referred to as personal transfers, amounted to €50.9 billion, an increase of 8% compared with €47.0 billion in 2022. Inflows to the EU totalled €13.9 billion, an increase of 4% compared with €13.4 billion in 2022. Personal transfers consist of flows of money sent by EU resident households to non-resident households.

In the last 5 years, a substantial growth of outflows of personal transfers was observed. Outflows have surged by 53%, while inflows have demonstrated a more modest growth pattern with an increase of just 11%. As a result, there has been a widening negative balance for the EU vis-a-vis non-EU countries, reaching €37.0 billion in 2023.

This information comes from data on personal transfers and compensation of employees published by Eurostat today. This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.

Source dataset: bop_rem6

Impact of net personal transfers on the EU economies

In 2023, personal transfers resulted in a surplus for 9 EU countries as their inflows exceeded outflows. Among those countries, 4 reported a surplus representing more than 1% of their respective gross domestic product (GDP): Croatia (2.9% of GDP), Bulgaria (1.5%), Portugal (1.3%) and Romania (1.1%).

Source datasets: bop_rem6 and nama_10_gdp

In contrast, Cyprus (-1.0%), Belgium (-0.7%), France (-0.6%), Greece and Spain (each -0.5%) exhibited the largest deficits of personal transfers vis-a-vis the rest of the world as a share of their respective GDP.