OFFICIAL: Juncker’s Luxembourghers are EU’s highest spenders on booze

EU data shows EU Commission President’s compatriots spend most per head on alcohol

To see in the New Year properly, Brexit Facts4EU.Org took a look at alcohol consumption in the EU.   We researched the official figures and then produced the graph you can see below, which shows expenditure on alcohol by head of population.

It turns out that the biggest spenders per head are….  the fellow countrymen and women of Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Commission President.

HEY BIG (BOOZE) SPENDERS

The latest official EU figures for alcohol consumption per year show that EU citizens are spending a total of €131 billion (£118 billion Pounds) annually.

In general terms, the further north you go in the EU, the higher the expenditure on alcohol per head of population.  The exception is Luxembourg, which is located in the centre of things, very close to Brussels.

Luxembourg is of course the home country of the EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.  You didn’t vote for him (you couldn’t) and you can’t vote him out.  In the EU, this is called democracy.

WHERE’S MALTA?

When Mrs May goes to Brussels, she frequently seems to find herself seated or standing next to the diminutive Prime Minister of Malta, a country the size of an average British town.

Strangely, the EU is unable to publish data on alcohol counsumption in Malta because it is ‘confidential’.  This is why the observant amongst our readers will have noticed that only 27 member states are represented in our chart.

NOTES ON THE DATA

We used the latest figures from the EU for this article.  Aside from the Maltese who seem to be secretive about their drinking habits, the Dutch have not released figures since 2016, so we used their 2016 figure in the chart above.

It’s important to note that the chart shows the spend by head of population, and is therefore only a general guide.  The expenditure will of course be affected by the price of alcoholic drinks in each country, which in turn is affected by duties imposed on alcohol by each government.  The UK has amongst the highest duties on alcohol in the EU, the last time we checked.

OBSERVATIONS

For the humourless Remainers reading this, we should explain that this article is presented as a bit of amusement as people go back to work.  However the facts are correct, as ever, and come from the EU Commission’s official statistics body Eurostat.

Sadly, we were not able to find any EU data on the incidence of sciatica by member state. 

(A recent video of the EU Commission President staggering around and unable to walk unaided after lunch at a formal EU event was explained by an EU spokesman as an unfortunate occurrence of sciatica.)

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