In 2019, the EU Member States’ general government expenditure on defence amounted to €168.5 billion, representing 2.6% of total general government expenditure. This is equivalent to 1.2% of GDP.
Since 2014, the share of defence expenditure in total government expenditure increased slightly, while the percentage of GDP remained stable at 1.2% of GDP.
Highest ratio of government expenditure on defence to GDP in Estonia, lowest in Ireland
In 2019, the ratio of general government expenditure on defence to GDP varied across EU Member States from 0.2% in Ireland and 0.4% in Luxembourg to 2.0% in Greece and 2.1% in Estonia.
Source dataset: gov_10a_exp
For more information:
- 2019 data for Spain, France and Portugal are provisional. Further methodological information is available in the Statistics Explained article.
- This information on general government expenditure for the function 'defence' (according to the Classification of the Functions of Government - COFOG) is complemented with an online article.
- To read more, you can refer to the set of statistical articles based on government expenditure by function. An interactive infographic is also available on the Eurostat website.
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