[spireitematt]

I think the reason for these numbers (if they are indeed accurate!) is fairly clear - there is a 'weighting' process whereby the more affluent countries do indeed support countries that are less affluent but the main objective is to try to raise the level of financial comfort that these lesser nations/members can enjoy and eventually raise their trade expectations in the process. As said previously, there must be some level of reform to gradually evolve in the future but IMO one does not remove one's membership from that huge market place called the EU and 'cut off your nose to spite yourself' - that is just utter folly! You force change from within!

The numbers are indeed correct.

Interesting thing I found out was, during the referendum the Leave campaign said the UK was in the top 3 contributors to the EU but actually we are the 8th highest contributor to the EU.

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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!!

Don't even think the EU know why all these countries pay different amounts of money. Like 0762 said it there must be some sort of weighing process and probably depends on the population of countries, their economies etc.

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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.

A lot of the money will probably go into other smaller organisations and then given out to countries and universities as grants for research like you say. It would be very interesting if the EU actually published their accounts and had them out publically so the citizens of each country could have a look to see where their actual money is going and on what.