site.btaBulgaria No Longer Has Lowest Debt to GDP Ratio in EU

Bulgaria is no longer the country with the lowest government debt as a share of its GDP in the European Union, according to Eurostat data on the government debt of the member states released on Wednesday, which puts Bulgaria in second to last place, ahead of Estonia which has a debt level of 24%.

In the third quarter of 2024, Bulgaria's debt-to-economy ratio reached 24.6%. Compared to the second quarter of the previous year, the level of indebtedness increased by 2.4 percentage points. Bulgaria is also the country with the highest increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio in the third quarter compared to the second.

Luxembourg remains the third least indebted country in the EU (26.6%)

After Bulgaria, the debt-to-GDP ratio increased in the third quarter compared to the April-June period fastest in Romania by 2 p.p. followed by Finland and France with an increase of 1.4 p.p. each.

The most significant decreases in government debt as a share of the economy were in Portugal, Slovenia and Greece.

The countries with the highest debt burden in the EU in the third quarter were Greece (158.2%), Italy (136.3%) and France (113.8%).