[hibeejim21]

Those numbers illustrate one of the things that is wrong with the EU.  We pay in twice what we get back, and while I accept that isn’t the whole story, compare that to Hungary putting in 1 billion and getting 6.6b back!!!!!  Poland pays in 4b and gets 17.4b back, why???  There seems no rhyme or reason for these numbers to be all over the place and unless someone from the EU could explain that in layman terms these numbers will always seem wrong to the ordinary man in the street!!

But some of the EU spending does not directly come back to members because it is for policies implemented collectively for instance. I'd also bet that figure excludes amounts paid directly to UK recipients as well, such as universities for research. Even relatively small UK universities get hundreds of millions of euros.

There isn't going to be a budget where every person, organisation or country got out what they paid in. The EU budget sees richer EU member states being net contributors, and poorer member states being net recipients. This is a basic principle of re-distributive budgets,in particular with eastern European nations where it makes sense to help strengthen them.

The benefits of staying in the EU are far more complex that that in/out figure.