On Monday 23 October, the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat) published a press release with figures concerning the government debt and deficit on the basis of data supplied by the member states and showing an improvement in public finances in 2016 in both the eurozone and the EU as a whole.
In the eurozone, for instance, government deficit fell from 2.1% of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of 2015 to 1.5% of GDP at the end of 2016, while this fell by 0.7 points in the European Union as a whole (2.4% of GDP in 2015 compared to 1.7% of GDP in 2016). Eurostat also reports that the government debt ratio has fallen on average from 89.9% to 88.9% of GDP in the eurozone and from 84.5% to 83.2% of GDP in the EU over the same period.
However, this good economic news masks disparities between the member states. For instance, although Luxembourg (+1.6% of GDP), Malta and Sweden (+1.1% of GDP) hold the top three spots in terms of budgetary surplus, there were three countries at the end of last year with a government deficit of more than 3% of GDP: Romania (3% of GDP), France (3.4% of GDP) and Spain (4.5% of GDP).
Similarly, the situation differs greatly in terms of debt, with Estonia (9.4% of GDP), Luxembourg (20.8% of GDP) and Bulgaria (29.0% of GDP) reporting a debt below 30% of GDP in 2016, whilst Portugal (130.1% of GDP), Italy (132.0% of GDP) and Greece (180.8% of GDP) had debt levels well over 100% of GDP. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)