Public debt in the EU: rapid growth and new records

Last year, most EU countries increased their public debt faster than their economies grew, and in some cases debt reached multi-year highs. 

The most significant increase in debt relative to GDP occurred in Poland and Romania – by 5.9 percentage points, to 55.6% and 54.8%, respectively. In Finland, the indicator increased by 4.6 percentage points, to 82.1%. Significant growth was also observed in Slovakia (59.7%), Estonia (23.6%), Austria (81.8%) and France (113.1%), where the increase was more than 3 percentage points.  

The highest debt level was recorded in Greece – 153.6% of GDP, despite a decrease of 10.3 percentage points. France, Italy (135.3%), Belgium (104.7%) and Spain (101.8%) also had debt exceeding the volume of their economies.

At the same time, the national debt of Romania, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic turned out to be the largest in the last 10 years. In Poland, France and Bulgaria, debt has grown to its highest level since 2020, and in Austria, Belgium, Lithuania and Slovakia – since 2021.