Almost every fifth employee in the business sector of Bulgaria worked for a foreign-controlled company in 2023. The share is 18.7%, or 411,020 people. Thus, Bulgaria is 3.2 percentage points above the average level for the European Union, where the share is 15.5%. Eurostat data covers enterprises that operate in the respective country, but are controlled by an owner or group outside it. They show the significant role of international capital in the Bulgarian labor market.
The largest share of employees in foreign-controlled enterprises is in Luxembourg - 44.5%. This is followed by Slovakia with 28.0%, the Czech Republic with 27.5%, Ireland with 27.3% and Romania with 26.9%. In Romania, 1,301,612 people work in such companies.
Eurostat links the high values in some of these countries to the relatively low labor costs and the large number of workers in the manufacturing industry. The owners are often from other European Union countries.
In the largest economies in the union, the share is lower - 12.1% in Germany, 11.9% in France and 9.9% in Italy. Spain is at the level of the EU average - 15.5%.
Across the European Union, foreign-controlled enterprises account for only 1.1% of all active firms in the business sector. However, they employ 15.5% of the employed, and their contribution to the created added value reaches 24.0%.
“Foreign-controlled enterprises are, as a rule, significantly larger than local ones“, Eurostat indicates.The highest share of these companies is in Luxembourg – 27.9% of all enterprises, followed by Estonia with 10.9%. In France, Italy and Poland the share is 0.1%.
Over 60% of foreign-controlled enterprises in the EU are controlled by owners from another member state. According to Eurostat, geographical proximity is among the factors that influence investors' decisions.
In Slovakia, 80.6% of these companies are controlled by owners from the EU, and in Greece – 78.3%. In Ireland, the share of enterprises controlled by non-EU countries reaches 73.2%, and in Malta - 57.9%. Among non-EU investors, US companies provide the most jobs.
Foreign-controlled enterprises also have a significant presence in research and development. In 2023, they provided 25.0% of R&D expenditure in industry and construction in the 18 EU countries with available data, as well as 25.2% of personnel in this field. In the Czech Republic, Ireland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden, the share of these companies in expenditure is over 50%.