Clotilde Armand is a Romanian MEP with the Renew Europe group. She is a member of the European Parliament’s budgets committee.

There's a major fallacy at the heart of the EU's budget debate.

The story rich western European countries tell themselves is a nice one: They are generous souls helping out their poorer eastern neighbors, who rely on EU subsidies and the goodwill of the EU's so-called "net payers." They also like to paint these countries as ungrateful aid recipients, pointing to the Euroskeptic rhetoric of leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

But the larger macroeconomic picture tells a different story.

Contrary to popular wisdom, most of the money in Europe flows from East to West, not the other way around.

Western European companies have been making big money from EU-funded public procurements in Eastern Europe.

When Eastern European countries started joining the European Union, a deal was made. Eastern governments agreed to remove trade barriers so western companies could access a vast pool of consumers impatient to make the most of their new capitalist lifestyle. In exchange, western governments promised to transfer EU money eastward so the former Soviet bloc could build the infrastructure it desperately needed.

Investment poured into the East. Former state licences were bought for a pittance and western businesses cut themselves a good share in every sector of the eastern economy. As a result, sophisticated consumer goods entered eastern households. Large cheques were written to the most underdeveloped regions.

This was hailed as a success. The EU’s “cohesion policy” was working its magic: The East started to catch up with the rest of the club. But the biggest "winners" of this development have been western European countries, some of which are now tightening their purse strings and insisting they can no longer "pay significantly more to the EU than we get back."

In reality, the money western countries send to Eastern Europe through the EU budget pales in comparison with the profits western companies make from investments in the East.

Between 2010 and 2016, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic or Slovakia received the equivalent of 2 percent to 4 percent of their GDP in EU funds. But the flow of capital exiting these countries over the same period was between 4 percent and close to 8 percent of GDP.

Western European companies have also been making big money from EU-funded public procurements in Eastern Europe. The first high-speed train line crossing the Baltics is being designed by Spanish, German and French firms. The project’s first large construction contract was awarded to a Belgian company.

I see this dynamic in person when I am at home in Romania, where the local supermarkets belong to French-owned chains like Carrefour or Auchan. My phone operator is French. The water coming out of my tap is provided by a French company. I also pay my gas bill to a French multinational — through a French-owned bank.

The flow of wealth from East to West can also be seen in the brain drain of skilled workers the region has experienced — a hefty price that doesn't show up on the EU budget negotiators' Excel spreadsheets.

Take the health sector for instance. No EU funds make up for the 10 percent of Romanian doctors leaving the country every year to heal patients in the West, for example. The country has already lost half of its doctors between 2009 and 2015. Shortly after Poland joined, over 60 percent of fifth- and sixth-year medical students said they planned to work abroad; in Bulgaria that figure went up to 90 percent.

The EU is a grand bargain that benefits us all — as long as everybody remembers to both play their part and pay their part.

In negotiations over the next seven-year budget, European leaders would do well to look at the bigger picture. The talks cannot just be about public money, and should not become a brawl between "net contributors" and "net beneficiaries."

The idea that there are "losers" and "winners" in the EU budget game is economically wrong — we’re all net beneficiaries of the EU single market. It is also politically dangerous. Brexit has shown us that when mainstream politicians start saying they should get their “money back” then the populists at the fringes will argue the country should “take back control.”

The EU is a grand bargain that benefits us all — as long as everybody remembers to both play their part and pay their part.

EU cohesion policy is no charity. It is high time Western politicians tell their voters how much their countries benefited from the bloc's enlargement to the East.