{"id":462552,"date":"2026-08-18T12:13:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T10:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/08\/18\/eurostat-spesa-ue-per-listruzione-stabile-al-47-per-cento-del-pil-ma-litalia-e-sotto-la-media\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T13:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T11:10:14","slug":"eurostat-eu-education-spending-stable-at-4-7-per-cent-of-gdp-italy-below-average","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/08\/18\/eurostat-eu-education-spending-stable-at-4-7-per-cent-of-gdp-italy-below-average\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurostat: EU education spending stable at 4.7 per cent of GDP; Italy below average"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels \u2013 Public spending on education in 2023 reached 4.7 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of European Union countries,&nbsp;stable from&nbsp;the previous year. <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/web\/products-eurostat-news\/w\/ddn-20260818-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">According to Eurostat figures published today (18 August)<\/a>, <strong>2020 was the year in which EU countries allocated the highest share of their gross domestic product (GDP)<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>5.0 per cent,&nbsp;<\/strong>likely to address the difficulties that the Covid-19 pandemic brought to European students.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;These figures are also confirmed by <a href=\"https:\/\/education.ec.europa.eu\/news\/demographic-challenges-open-up-opportunities-for-quality-investment-in-education-new-report-shows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a European Commission report<\/a>, which states that, in 2023, EU countries spent a total of 806 billion euros on education.<strong> At the national level, the proportion of total public expenditure allocated to education averaged 9.6 per cent.<\/strong> However, there are variations between European countries.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>In 2023, only twelve EU Member States increased public spending on education from&nbsp;2022 levels.<\/strong>&nbsp;Public spending on education was highest in&nbsp;northern Europe: Sweden (6.8 per cent), Finland (6.3 per cent), and Belgium (6.2 per cent), while the lowest percentages as a proportion of GDP were recorded further south: in Romania (3.0 per cent), Greece (3.3 per cent), and Malta (3.4 per cent).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;Italy\u2019s percentage is lower than the European average: <strong>in 2023, Italy allocated 4.1 per cent of its GDP to education<\/strong>, a figure that remained stable compared with 2022 but was 0.38 percentage points lower than in 2020, the year in which public spending on education reached its highest level.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/08\/27\/european-investments-in-education-on-the-rise-boosting-competitiveness\/\">Last year<\/a>, the European Commission already presented a <a href=\"https:\/\/education.ec.europa.eu\/news\/demographic-challenges-open-up-opportunities-for-quality-investment-in-education-new-report-shows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new report <\/a>highlighting a positive shift in education funding across the EU and giving fresh momentum to the Union\u2019s competitive edge. Titled Investing in Education 2025, <a href=\"https:\/\/op.europa.eu\/it\/publication-detail\/-\/publication\/b575982f-82f0-11f0-9af8-01aa75ed71a1\/language-en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the report <\/a>details the multiple economic and social benefits of education spending, supporting the goals of the <a href=\"https:\/\/commission.europa.eu\/topics\/competitiveness\/union-skills_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Union of Skills<\/a> strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels \u2013 Public spending on education in 2023 reached 4.7 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of European Union countries,&nbsp;stable from&nbsp;the previous year. According to Eurostat figures published today (18 August), 2020 was the year in which EU countries allocated the highest share of their gross domestic product (GDP),&nbsp;5.0 per cent,&nbsp;likely to address [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7896,"featured_media":462522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25713,25774],"tags":[25871,26180,27007,27395,31425,31236,33190,26633,27526,35356],"class_list":["post-462552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-in-brief","tag-culture-2-en","tag-education-en","tag-eurostat-en-2","tag-product-internal-gross-en","tag-paesi-ue","tag-pills","tag-schooland","tag-spese-pubbliche"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7896"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462553,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462552\/revisions\/462553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}