Study – The volume and geography of remittances from the EU

The study, which was financed by DG ECFIN, estimates bilateral workers' remittances from the 27 EU countries to all relevant (from a migration perspective) countries in the world. As better knowledge on EU remittance flows is essential for informing decisions on remittances in both public and private sector, the main purposes of the study are (1) to complement the figures reported by official statistics trying to account for the volume of formal as well as informal channels, and (2) to present a geographical breakdown of remittance flows by origin and destination countries. For these purposes an indirect estimation methodology was used that estimates remittances from migrants' disposable income and their propensity to remit. The main results suggest that total remittance flows have been continuously increasing between 2001 and 2004, the number of migrants being the most important determinant of this increase. In 2004 migrants in EU-27 remitted about €20 billion to countries outside EU-27, and almost €7 billion within EU-27. The 10 main remittance corridors identified are Germany-Turkey, France-Morocco, France-Portugal, Spain-Morocco, Spain-Colombia, Germany-Poland, Spain-Ecuador, France-Algeria, Italy-Albania, and Germany-Serbia.

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