We visualised the wealth of Europe’s richest and researched how they influence politics.

Click on a country to visualise the wealth of the richest person or family of that country.
Hint: The richest person in Europe is from France.
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This dot represents one thousand euros.
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This is one million euros.
Now let's compare this to the wealth of the richest person or family in .


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Firstname Lastname.

Lastname's fortune is estimated to be ~WEALTH euros.
This is a lot, isn't it?





euros
How does one get so much money?
Since 1989, Bernard Arnault has been the CEO and controlling shareholder of LVMH, which owns luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Sephora. The group has acquired numerous luxury brands across fashion, beauty, jewelry, wine, and alcohol over the years. LVMH stands as the world's wealthiest luxury conglomerate today, significantly contributing to Arnault's wealth.

While often hailed as a "self-made man," Arnault's rise is a combination of shrewd business strategy and his grasp of the system. On the other hand, he became CEO at 27 thanks to his father, and he acquired the Boussac group, the owner of Christian Dior, thanks to enormous subsidies from the state, financial aid from oil companies and banks, and his small family fortune. The European Commission later classified these state subsidies as distorting competition between member states.
What would it take you to earn that much money?
How much money do you make per month?

The median wage in Europe is 1500 euros. Pick the option that is closest to your salary.
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This is how much money you make in a year earning 1500 euros per month.
And this is how much money you will make after working for 50 years for that income.

To become as rich as the Firstname Lastname, you would have to work for

10'000 years

However, you’d need to save all the money. No spending on food or rent.
It’s really difficult to grasp how rich the richest are. Maybe it helps to compare what you could buy with their fortune...
But we're getting to the end of the Firstname Lastname's wealth.
We're just messing with you; we're only halfway in.
The Firstname Lastname could invite every person in COUNTRY to the cinema.

Not just once but more than X times.
The Firstname Lastname could also pay for fun and expensive things. The production budget of Eurovision 2022 was 11.3 million euros.
Manufacturing a new high-speed train costs around 30 million euros.
The Eiffel Tower, Paris’ most significant monument built in 1899, would cost around 35 million euros today.
Let's go to a higher price class.
The production of the megahit film Barbie cost around 150 million euros.
Budget to film Barbie
The Firstname Lastname's wealth
With 167 million euros, science could potentially identify two million new species.
Identify species
The Firstname Lastname's wealth
The EU is planning to contribute 400 million euros to help rebuild Ukraine after the country’s victory.
Budget to rebuild Ukraine
The Firstname Lastname' wealth
Only very few people actually have notable sums of wealth.

Not even three percent of Europe’s population are millionaires. Only 592 people in Europe are billionaires, according to Forbes.
With just 1.2 billion euros a year, we could safeguard 841 species from extinction.
Cost of safeguarding species
The Firstname Lastname's wealth
With 3.24 billion euros, an ambitious plan to greatly improve the planet’s pandemic preparedness could be afforded.
Prepare for pandemic
The Firstname Lastname's wealth
It’s estimated that saving Venice from sinking would cost around 8 billion euros.
The cost of saving Venice
The Firstname Lastname's wealth

Giving an extra euros to every teacher in the country would only take up half of the Firstname Lastname's wealth.
To gain independence from their French colonial master, Haitian slaves had to pay 150 million francs in 1825, an unbelievable amount. It took Haiti around 122 years to pay off all associated interest. This debt is seen as the reason for Haiti’s lasting debt and inequality. According to French economist Thomas Piketty, France owes Haiti at least 25 billion euros in reparations. Bernard Arnault could singlehandedly pay for reparations for a centuries-long timeframe.
Reparations for Haiti
Bernard Arnault's wealth
He would still have enough money to end world hunger, at least for a year. A 2022 Oxfam estimate puts the price of ending world hunger at around 34 billion euros.
Cost of ending world hunger for a year
Bernard Arnault's wealth
Bernard Arnault could even still afford universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation, crucial to preventing disease outbreaks, in 140 low- and middle-income countries. That’s estimated to cost 105 billion euros per year.
Access to water and sanitation
The Firstname Lastname's wealth
The top one percent of Europeans own more than 25 percent of the continent’s wealth. However, the bottom fifty percent of Europeans own just about 5 percent of the continent's wealth.
However, while already being pretty unequal, Europe is doing rather well in global comparison.

The recent Wealth Inequality Report highlights stark differences between the world’s regions. The top one percent owns around half of the wealth in Central Asia and Latin America. There, the bottom fifty percent barely holds one percent of wealth.
But also at the very top of the wealth ranking, the distribution is incredibly unequal. The average wealth of one of the 1% richest people is dwarfed by the average wealth of the 0.001% richest people. Europe's richest man, Bernard Arnault, has over 200 billion euros.

Bernard Arnault truly stands out. The second-richest European is Amancio Ortega, who owns more than 100 billion euros less.
The Firstname Lastname's wealth
Bernard Arnault's wealth
Amancio Ortega's wealth
Bernard Arnault's wealth
Let's look at Europe's richest not only as individuals but as a group:

If you combine the wealth of the three richest people of the 40 European countries that are part of this investigation, you arrive at a combined wealth of over 1,500,000,000,000 euros.
The Bernard Arnault's wealth
Combined wealth
NGOs estimate that taxing Europe’s billionaires’ wealth at just 5% could raise nearly 250 billion euros a year.

This is more than the entire EU budget.

We deserve a real debate about wealth inequality. For that, we need to understand how rich the richest really are and how they shape our world.

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Continue reading about Europe’s richest

We profiled the richest people in Europe and how they are tied to politics.

To the detailed profiles

The patterns behind the individuals: How does wealth get translated into power? How did they become so rich?

Read our overview

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