19/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - According to Eurostat, spending on pensions (invalidity, old-age, partial, anticipated old age, early-retirement survivors) represented 12.6% of GDP in the European Union in 1998. Great differences were observed between Member States: Italy, for example, devoted 14.7% of its GDP to pensions that year, whereas Ireland only devoted 4.1%. Between 1990 and 1998, spending on pensions increased by 0.9 percentage points of GDP in the EU, going from 11.7% to 12.6%, notes Eurostat, stipulating that those developments had not been uniform over the period under consideration. The Community's Statistical Office also states that in 1998, in most Member States, spending on pensions was the largest heading of spending on social protection, or 47% of the total in the EU. Still in 1998, old age pensions represented ¾ of all spending on pensions in the EU.