According to Eurostat, the European Union’s debt stopped decreasing in the first quarter of this year, rising to 82 per cent of GDP from 81.5 per cent at the end of last year. The most significant increase was observed in Slovakia, but debt is also increasing in the Czech Republic, where national debt has reached a new record.
The situation has worsened in the eurozone countries. The debt of the twenty countries using the euro is higher than the total EU debt, reaching 88.7 per cent of GDP compared to 88.2 per cent at the end of the last quarter. While the year-over-year debt of the eurozone and the entire union is lower, it has increased in the Czech Republic, reaching 43.4 percent of GDP by the end of the first quarter of this year.
The EU’s national debt rose above 14.10 trillion euros (more than 355 trillion CZK) in absolute terms by the end of the first quarter, compared to 13.53 trillion euros a year earlier. In the Czech Republic, the national debt grew to a record high of more than 3.33 trillion CZK, up from 3.09 trillion CZK at the end of the first quarter of 2023.
Greece remains the EU’s most indebted country, although the situation is gradually improving. At the end of the first quarter, the debt stood at 159.8 per cent of GDP compared to 161.9 per cent at the end of the last quarter and 169.4 per cent a year ago. Other countries with debt over 100 per cent of GDP include Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, and Portugal. Conversely, Bulgaria has the lowest debt at 22.6 percent of GDP.
Slovakia saw the fastest increase in debt in quarter-to-quarter comparisons, rising by 4.6 percentage points to 60.7 per cent of GDP. Rapid debt growth was also recorded in Estonia and Belgium. On the other hand, the most significant debt reduction was seen in Greece, followed by Cyprus, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Germany also managed to reduce its debt slightly.
In the modern history of the Czech Republic, the lowest state debt was between 1996 and 1998, when it was nine per cent of GDP under Prime Minister Václav Klaus. From 1999 to 2013, debt steadily increased, reaching 41 per cent of GDP. During this time, prime ministers included Miloš Zeman, Vladimír Špidla, Stanislav Gross, Jiří Paroubek, Mirek Topolánek, Petr Nečas, and non-partisans Jan Fischer and Jiří Rusnok. Debt decreased until the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 29 percent of GDP in 2019 under prime ministers Bohuslav Sobotka and later Andrej Babiš.