I think I found the problem. Even though my PayPal account is held in Euro
(you cannot choose otherwise), my primary balance was in US Dollars.

So funding in Euro and then paying in Euro would involve two extra currency
conversions, each of which are charged at about 2.5%. This adds up.

I changed my primary balance to Euro (and thus took a loss of EUR 5,98),
and transferred another the remainder of the money from my bankaccount.
Hopefully this will now arrive in one piece

I think my account was in US Dollars, because when I joined PayPal,
PayPal Europe did not exist yet. When Paypal Europe started, they said
everything would be converted to Euro automatically, but now it appears
this was not the case.

Pim