Public spending on education accounts for 4.6% of the GDP of the EU, according to the most recent data from Eurostat, with several countries reporting above-average spending.
According to the data, which dates from 2022, Sweden spends the most, with 6.86% of its public expenditure going towards education, followed by Belgium (6.18%) and Finland (5.96%).
Other countries to report a higher-than-average spend on education include Denmark (5.87%), France (5.33%), the Netherlands (5.18%) and Austria (5.13%).
At the other end of the scale, Romania spends just 2.89% of its GDP on education, followed by Croatia (3.09%), Greece (3.38%) and Hungary (3.39%), Eurostat noted. No data was available for Ireland and Estonia.
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Education in the EU
At EU level, the 4.6% spend on education in 2022 is 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous year, and 0.4 percentage points down on 2020 (5.0%), which was the year that saw the highest level of expenditure on education since the data collection started in 2012.
The largest share of spend on education at EU level was allocated to tertiary education (1.2% of GDP), with the smallest to pre-primary education (0.6%), the Eurostat data showed.
Public Expenditure on Education by EU Member State – 2022 (% of GDP)
| Country | Education Spending (% of GDP) |
|---|---|
| Sweden | 6.86 |
| Belgium | 6.18 |
| Finland | 5.96 |
| Denmark | 5.87 |
| France | 5.33 |
| Netherlands | 5.18 |
| Austria | 5.13 |
| Slovenia | 4.96 |
| Germany | 4.79 |
| Cyprus | 4.73 |
| Slovakia | 4.66 |
| Portugal | 4.53 |
| Bulgaria | 4.50 |
| Spain | 4.42 |
| Poland | 4.31 |
| Czechia | 4.29 |
| Latvia | 4.13 |
| Italy | 4.07 |
| Lithuania | 4.07 |
| Malta | 4.06 |
| Luxembourg | 3.74 |
| Hungary | 3.39 |
| Greece | 3.38 |
| Croatia | 3.09 |
| Romania | 2.89 |
| Estonia | n/a |
| Ireland | n/a |
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