Romania lags behind most of the other countries in the European Union in terms of social protection expenditures expressed as a percentage of the GDP, according to the latest data released by Eurostat.

According to Eurostat data, five member states (Finland, France, Denmark, Italy and Austria) spent at least 20% of their GDP for social protection in 2018, while Ireland, Malta, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic spent less than 12% of GDP for social protection.

In the case of Romania, the ratio was 11.6% in 2018, well below the average of 19.2% registered at the level of the European Union.

The "expenditures for elderly" category of social protection expenditures, which includes pensions, accounted for 10.4% of GDP at European Union level in 2018. In all member states, this category represents the most important part of social protection spending but the weight varies between 13.6% of GDP in Finland and 3.2% of GDP in Ireland. In 2018, Romania allocated 8.6% of GDP for pensions.

When it comes to Government spending on health, Denmark ranks first with 8.3% of GDP, followed by Austria (8.2%) and France (8.1%). At the opposite end there are Cyprus (2.7%), Latvia (4%) and Romania (4.7%), which are below the 7% average registered in the EU.

Sweden leads among the EU countries when it comes to the share of expenditure for education in GDP (6.9%) while Romania and Ireland (3.2% - half of EU’s 6.4% average) were last.

However, Romania ranks third-to-last in the EU in terms of overall government spending to GDP, with 34.9%, way below the EU average of 46.7%, mainly because the budget revenues to GDP are also among the lowest in the Union.

editor@romania-insider.com

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