47 million employed by multinational enterprise groups

In 2022, 146 400 multinational enterprise (MNE) groups were operating in the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries (EU-EFTA). They employed over 47 million people in EU-EFTA countries, or 28% of people working in the business economy including industry, construction and services.

This information comes from the data on multinational enterprise groups in EU-EFTA countries published by Eurostat today, based on EuroGroups register (EGR). This article presents just a handful of findings from a more detailed Statistics Explained article.

Source datasets: egr_mne and egr_emp

Considering multinational enterprise groups operating in the EU and EFTA, 64 % were controlled by an EU country and 9% by an EFTA country. Together, they employed 83% of the total workforce of multinational enterprise groups in the EU and EFTA.

The remaining 27%, employing 17% of the workforce of these groups, were controlled by countries outside the EU and EFTA.

Most multinational enterprise groups controlled by Germany

Among multinational enterprise groups controlled by EU or EFTA countries, 15 500 were from Germany (making 11% of all multinational enterprise groups operating in the EU and EFTA), 13 100 were from the Netherlands (9%) and 10 200 from Switzerland (7%).

Source dataset: egr_mne

When considering countries outside the EU and EFTA, most multinational enterprise groups in the EU and EFTA were controlled by the United Kingdom (14 900 multinational enterprise groups; 10% of all operating in EU and EFTA), the United States (7 500; 5%) and China (including Hong Kong) (2 700; 2%).