In 2018, the 27 EU Member States’ government expenditure on defence amounted to €162 billion, representing 2.6% of total government expenditure. This is equivalent to 1.2% of GDP.

Overall, in the EU, general government expenditure on defence as a percentage of GDP slightly decreased since the beginning of the time series in 2001 (1.4%).

Highest ratio of government expenditure on defence to GDP in Latvia, lowest in Ireland

In 2018, the ratio of government expenditure on defence to GDP varied across EU Member States from 0.3% in Ireland, 0.5% in both Luxembourg and Malta and 0.6% in Austria to 2.0% in both Estonia and Greece and 2.1% in Latvia.

Source dataset: gov_10a_exp

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.

For more information, refer to the set of statistical articles based on government expenditure by function. An interactive infographic is also available on the Eurostat website.

Note:

The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.

2018 data for Spain, France, Croatia and Slovakia are labelled provisional. 2018 data for Portugal are labelled estimated. Further methodological information is available in the Statistics Explained

To contact us, please visit our User Support page.

For press queries, please contact our Media Support.