The public debt level of the European Union fell below 88 percent of gross domestic product in the first quarter of this year. Compared to the same period last year, the share of public debt to GDP is 4.5 percentage points lower, Eurostat said.
The level of indebtedness also fell
Although the absolute volume of the public debt of the European Union increased by more than 500 billion euros, it fell significantly in relation to the gross domestic product. In the first quarter of last year, it was 92.3 percent, and a year later it was only 87.8 percent of the twenty-seventh GDP. Similarly, the level of indebtedness of the Eurozone fell sharply, from 100 to 95.6 percent of GDP.
It is still true that the most indebted country in the European Union is Greece, with less than 190 percent of GDP. At the opposite end of the scale is Estonia, whose public debt reaches only 17.6 percent in relation to the performance of its economy.
France’s debt is growing
At the same time, Greece is the country that was able to reduce the level of indebtedness the most significantly, by exactly four percentage points in relation to GDP. On the contrary, France is characterized by the fastest increase in public debt in relation to economic performance, by 1.9 percentage points. In this case, it is a change compared to the last quarter of last year.
