Billionaire wealth in the EU surges by nearly €400 million per day in 2024, with a new billionaire nearly every week

Download Oxfam’s report for “Takers not Makers” and the methodology note.

The report shows that on a global scale: 

• Billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 alone, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day, at a rate three times faster than the year before. This is the second largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began. Forbes data indicates that the largest annual increase in billionaire wealth - $5.8 trillion - occurred in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
   
• An average of nearly 4 new billionaires were minted every week.
   

Based on the same methodology, Oxfam calculated that in the EU: 

• At the end of 2024 (30/11/2024), total billionaire wealth in the EU stood at €2.2 trillion – an increase from 2023’s figure of €2.1 trillion.
   
• In 2024, the number of billionaires in the EU was 440, an increase of 49 from 2023. 
   
• In the EU, 74% of billionaire wealth is either from crony or monopolistic sources or inherited. Specifically, 69% is inherited, 4% comes from monopoly power, and 1% is from crony connections.
   
• In 2023, the richest 1% in 12 EU countries were paid €84.4 billion from the Global South through the financial system. The strong currencies of rich nations give these countries, and the owners of financial assets in them, a huge advantage, enabling them to borrow at a very low cost, and then channelling the capital into more profitable investments in the Global South.
   

Oxfam is calling on governments, including European governments, to act rapidly to reduce inequality and end extreme wealth:

• Radically reduce inequality. European governments need to commit to ensuring that, both globally and at a national level, the incomes of the top 10 percent are no higher than the bottom 40 percent. 
   
• Tax the richest to end extreme wealth. Global tax policy should fall under a new UN tax convention, ensuring the richest people and corporations pay their fair share. Tax havens must be abolished. Oxfam’s analysis shows that half of the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax for direct descendants. Inheritance needs to be taxed to dismantle the new aristocracy.  
   
• End the flow of wealth from South to North. Cancel debts and end the dominance of rich countries and corporations over financial markets and trade rules. Restructure voting powers in the World Bank, IMF and UN Security Council to guarantee fair representation of Global South countries. Former colonial powers must also confront the lasting harm caused by their colonial rule, offer formal apologies, and provide reparations to affected communities.
   

Oxfam is calling on the EU institutions to:

• Promote taxes that reduce inequality such as wealth taxes. The EU can also harmonise different EU countries rules on the taxation of capital gains, i.e. profit from the sale of property or investments, and ban tax regimes that allow wealthy individuals to dodge paying their fair share of tax;
   
• Step up the fight against tax havens, which allow companies to pay little taxes, create a tougher and fairer EU list of tax havens and enforce stronger penalties against EU tax havens;
   
• Support the building of a more inclusive and transparent global tax system by actively cooperating and backing the next steps to build an ambitious framework convention on tax under the UN. 
   

In November 2023, EU countries voted against a resolution to begin negotiations on a UN framework convention and in December 2024 they abstained from the vote on the Terms of Reference for the Convention. Both the resolution and the Terms of Reference passed. 

According to the World Bank, the actual number of people living on less than $6.85 a day has barely changed since 1990.

Vincent Bolloré bought several former colonial companies in Africa, taking advantage of the wave of privatizations spurred by the structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and the World Bank in the 1990s. This strategy enabled Bolloré to build an extensive transport-logistics network in Africa, operating in 42 ports across the continent.