Foreign-controlled enterprises as a share of value added in European countries 2021

As of 2021, the average level of gross value added produced by foreign-controlled enterprises in European Union countries was 22.5 percent. Several European countries far exceeded this amount, however, with Ireland and Luxembourg being the two countries with the greatest share of the value added produced by foreign enterprises. Ireland saw approximately 72 percent of its value added created by foreign enterprises in 2021, of which 66.5 percent came from enterprises based outside the EU. This is because Ireland has become a hub for multinational corporations' European headquarters, particularly for technology companies from the United States such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Luxembourg, on the other hand, is a hub for intra-EU investment, with almost a third of its value added created by foreign enterprises from other EU countries. Luxembourg has capitalized on its status as a key center of EU administration and politics to become a hub for the consulting, banking, and wealth management industries in Europe. By contrast, France, Cyprus, and Germany saw the smallest shares of their value added produced by foreign-controlled enterprises in the same year, with all three countries having less than a fifth of their output coming from foreign companies.