Eventualforderungen

Liabilities are called ‘contingent’ in the sense that they are by nature only potential and not actual liabilities.

The relevance of collecting this kind of information is recognised in ESA 2010, paragraph 5.11:

‘Although contingent assets and contingent liabilities are not recorded in the accounts, they are important for policy and analysis, and information on them needs to be collected and presented as supplementary data. Even though no payments may turn out to be due for contingent assets and contingent liabilities, a high level of contingencies may indicate an undesirable level of risk on the part of those units offering them.’

Contingent liabilities are not part of the government debt as defined in Council regulation 479/2009 on the application of the Protocol on the excessive deficit procedure annexed to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Data collection

The data on contingent liabilities are collected by Eurostat in the context of the reinforced EU economic governance, in particular, pursuant to Council Directive 2011/85/EU amended by new Council Directive 2024/1265 on requirements for budgetary frameworks of the Member States. Article 14(3) of the Directive specifies the statistical data requirements for the EU Member States:

‘For all sub-sectors of general government, Member States shall publish relevant information on contingent liabilities with potentially large impacts on public budgets, including government guarantees, non-performing loans, and liabilities stemming from the operation of public corporations, including the extent thereof. Member States shall also publish information on the participation of general government in the capital of private and public corporations in respect of economically significant amounts.’

Eurostat conducted a task force in co-operation with EU Member States and the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) to assist EU Member States in implementing the Directive's statistical requirements. Its final report provides, among others, a set of templates and related notes indicating the methodology, the scope of compulsory information to be provided, the periodicity and the timeliness for national and Eurostat publication of data on contingent liabilities.

The changes needed in Eurostat's collection systems were formalised by the introduction of a supplement to the EDP questionnaire, under the provisions of Article 8(2d) of Council regulation 479/2009. The definitions and the implementation guidance were provided in Eurostat's decision of 22 July 2013 on supplement on contingent liabilities and potential obligations to the EDP related questionnaire.

The decision specifies that Eurostat will collect and publish the following indicators related to contingent liabilities:

• government guarantees
• off-balance public-private partnerships (PPPs)
• non-performing loans (government assets)
• liabilities of government-controlled entities classified outside the general government sector (public corporations) compiled by Eurostat based on information collected via a dedicated questionnaire introduced in 2011.

All indicators should be reported to Eurostat in millions of national currency at the level of individual general government subsectors before 31 December of the following year (T+12 months) by the national statistical authority. The metadata clarifying the completeness, definitions, use of estimations or timeliness of the data are to be provided to Eurostat alongside the data.

The EU Member States should publish the same indicators at national level and, in addition, the data on the participation of government in the capital of corporations.

Publication of data and results

Data are published in the Eurostat database, together with the related  metadata and country-specific footnotes. 

A news item and the article  Contingent liabilities and non-performing loans are also available.