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Germany is the largest economy in the EU (symbol picture)
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
This year Germany is expected to pay a record amount of around 38 million euros into the EU budget.
This was announced by the federal government at the request of an FDP MP.
This amount is almost 20 percent higher than in the previous year: in 2020 Germany had paid in just under 32 billion.
The "Welt" reported on it first.
However, this is a gross amount.
How high the net payments will be, after deducting the money that Germany receives from the EU, does not emerge from the Federal Government's answer.
The letter from the Ministry of Finance says that information will only be available in the next budget year.
Different invoices for net contributions
There are different invoices for how the net contribution is made up.
For example, some of the invoices exclude the customs duties levied by the Member States on imports into the common internal market, while other invoices include them.
Depending on the invoice, the net amount of Germany's payments was 19.4 billion or 15.5 billion euros.
One reason why the individual member states are depositing so much money this year is Brexit.
The remaining states of the EU are paying more to compensate for Britain's exit.
How much money an EU country pays into the joint budget depends primarily on the economic strength of the state: the greater the share in the economic strength of the EU, the higher the contribution payments.
Germany, as the largest economy in the EU, contributes a good quarter of the total EU budget.
Basically, according to the federal government, Germany is the largest net contributor in the EU, but also a net winner: No other economy benefits as much from the EU internal market as Germany.
The largest net recipient of the payments is expected to be Poland in 2021, as it was last year, according to the responsible Parliamentary State Secretary Bettina Hagedorn.
jlk / dpa