Romania lags among EU countries in terms of social protection expenditures

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.

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