After having significantly increased in Europe following the economic and financial crisis of 2008, the public deficit is now decreasing.
Within the European Union, it reached, in the 3rd quarter of 2017, 0.3% of GDP for the eurozone and 0.6% for the EU28, which is well below the 3% threshold set by the Stability and Growth Pact.
Insee estimates that for the year 2017, the French public deficit amounts to 2.6% of GDP, whereas it was 3.4% in 2016 and 3.7% in 2015.
Public revenues increased at the same time as expenditures decreased. For the EU28, in the 3rd quarter of 2017, public revenues represented 44.8% of GDP, a slight increase compared to the previous quarter, and expenditures represented 45.4%, a decrease of 0.5%.
In 2017, 2 member states out of 28 reached or exceeded the threshold of 3% of GDP for public deficit. These are Spain (-4.5%) and Hungary (-3.9%).
Conversely, 26 member states remain within the bounds of the Stability and Growth Pact, with 11 even being in surplus. The highest figures are those of Bulgaria and Malta (+4.2%), Germany (+2.5%), Luxembourg (+2.4%), and the Czech Republic (+1.6%).
