Business

151,004 multinational enterprise groups in EU and EFTA

Published

1 week ago

May 5, 2025

In 2023, 151,004 multinational enterprise groups were operating in the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, employing 49.0 million people. In the EU, multinational enterprise groups employed 29.3% of people working in the business economy including industry, construction and services.

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

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Source datasets: egr_mne and egr_emp

In 2023, 63.7 % of multinational enterprise groups operating in the EU or in an EFTA country were controlled by an EU country, while 9.5% were controlled by an EFTA country. Together, they employed 82.9% of the total workforce of multinational enterprise groups in the EU and EFTA.

The remaining 26.8% of multinational enterprises groups, employing 17.1% of the workforce of these groups, were controlled by countries outside the EU and EFTA.

Germany controlled most multinational enterprise groups in the EU and EFTA

Among multinational enterprise groups controlled by EU or EFTA countries, 15 484 were controlled from Germany (making 10.3% of all multinational enterprise groups operating in the EU and EFTA), 13,372 were from the Netherlands (8.9%) and 10 897 from Switzerland (7.2%).

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/news/maps/mne-groups-controlling-country-2023.html

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 (13 959 multinational enterprise groups), the United States (8 288) and China (2 621).