Greece’s education spending dropped 8.5% over the past decade, sliding from 3.64% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 to 3.33% in 2023, according to Eurostat figures released this year. The decline places Greece among the lowest spenders on education in the European Union, trailing far behind the bloc’s average.
Public investment in education across the EU stood at 4.7% of GDP in 2023, a figure unchanged from the previous year but down 0.3 percentage points from 5.0% in 2020, the highest level recorded since Eurostat began tracking the measure in 2012.
That gap means Greece now spends roughly 1.4 percentage points less of its economic output on education than the average EU country.
Only two nations reported lower spending than Greece. Romania recorded the lowest share at 3.0% of GDP, while Malta sat just above Greece at 3.4%. At the other end of the scale, Sweden led all EU countries at 6.8% of GDP, followed by Finland at 6.3% and Belgium at 6.2%.
Why Greece’s education spending lags Sweden and Finland
The gap between Greece and the top spending nations has stayed wide across the decade. Sweden alone put more than double the share of its economy into schools and universities that Greece did in 2023, a pattern that has held since Eurostat’s records began. Greece’s education spending has not matched the EU average in any year the agency has tracked.
Not every country followed the same path over the decade. Bulgaria raised education spending from 3.48% of GDP in 2012 to 4.44% in 2023, one of the sharpest gains in the EU. Latvia moved the opposite way, falling from 6.59% to 4.34%, a steeper drop than Greece posted over the same years.
The decline unfolded as Greece worked through a long debt crisis that forced deep cuts across public budgets for much of the past decade. Education funding, like many other areas of government spending, has not returned to the levels seen before those cuts began.
Eurostat’s figures cover public expenditure only, spanning pre-primary through university education, and exclude private spending, which varies widely from one EU country to another.
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