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Last year, Eurostat published data that revealed Finland had the strongest public finances indebtedness among European Union member states. The country’s public debt at the end of the year was 210.5 billion euros, accounting for 75.8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This debt ratio increased by 2.3 percentage points from the previous year, making it the highest increase compared to other member states.
To address this growing debt, the Finnish government announced a proposal involving spending cuts of around 1.4 billion euros and tax cuts of 1.4 billion euros to balance the public finances next year. Public debt refers to the debt of public entities to other sectors of the national economy and foreign countries.
While Finland experienced the highest increase in debt ratio, other countries like Latvia, Romania, Estonia, Luxembourg, and Belgium also saw their debt ratios increase last year. Overall, the combined debt ratio of EU member states decreased by 1.7 percentage points to 81.7 percent last year, with euro countries seeing a decrease of 2.3 percentage points to 88.6 percent.
Amongst euro states with heavy indebtedness were Greece, Italy, France
