And where does the taxpayer money come from? :) The state (or in this case the european central bank) owns and distribuites the money, then the tax payers give it back.
ECB does not issue funds to individual countries. It does so only to stabilise the economy which is moving funds from one place to another. Eventually, by creating debt.
But on point. ECB manufactures banknotes. As in, it prints them and hands over to individual countries. ECB is owned by central banks of all 27 countries.
Taxpayers money comes from the work they execute. For example, when I do a contract for someone, I get paid for the service I did. If I don’t do the work, I don’t get paid and “the state” doesn’t give me anything. Furthermore, if I do a lot of work in a year and the next year I have a misfortune of falling ill and can’t sustain working, I’m screwed because “the state” wants its share in case of future profits, and just takes it from my account leaving me with a hole. “The state” doesn’t care.
I remember such a conversation I had once with a representative of “the state”: “you don’t have our money?”, to which my immediate thought was “yeah, because we were sitting nights together trying delivering those projects”.
