Foreign workers in Romania sent home EUR 206 million in remittances last year, 22.6 percent more than in 2009, according to data from Eurostat. Remittances sent to other EU countries stood at EUR 106 million – a growth of 34.2 percent. The level of remittances leaving Romania was much higher than the measly EUR 46 million outflow from Poland.

At the EU level, money transferred by migrants to their countries of origin reached EUR 31 billion, up 3 percent on the year before. Most of it – some EUR 22.3 billion – was sent to countries outside the EU, while only EUR 8.8 billion went to EU destination countries.

The outflow of workers' remittances was highest in 2010 from Spain (EUR 7.2 billion euro or 23 percent of total EU27 remittances), Italy (EUR 6.6 billion or 21 percent), Germany (EUR 3 billion or 10 percent), France (EUR 2.9 billion or 9 percent), the Netherlands (EUR 1.5 billion or 5 percent) and Greece (EUR 1.1 billion or 3 percent).

(photo source: Sxc.hu)