{"id":470486,"date":"2026-11-06T16:41:02","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T15:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/11\/06\/cresce-del-5-per-cento-la-spesa-dellue-per-le-prestazioni-sociali-nel-2025\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T17:12:51","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T16:12:51","slug":"eu-social-benefit-spending-rises-5-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/11\/06\/eu-social-benefit-spending-rises-5-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"EU social benefit spending rises 5% in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 According to Eurostat, the EU\u2019s statistical office, total expenditure on social protection benefits in the EU reached \u20ac5.183 billion<\/a> in 2025, representing a 4.9 per cent increase compared with 2024. Social protection (or social security) refers to the set of public or private policies, regulations, and programmes designed to prevent, reduce, or eliminate poverty and vulnerability throughout people\u2019s lives. The data show that expenditure on such benefits in the EU accounted for 27.5 per cent of EU GDP<\/strong>, a decrease of 0.2 percentage points compared with the previous year. <\/p>\n

Among EU countries, expenditure \u2013 as a percentage of GDP \u2013 was highest in Austria<\/strong> (32.4 per cent of GDP), in Finland<\/strong> (32.2 per cent), and in France<\/strong> (32.1 per cent), while it was lowest in Ireland<\/strong> (11.7 per cent), Malta<\/strong> (13.8 per cent), and Hungary<\/strong> (16.7 per cent). Italy stood at 28.48 per cent<\/strong>. Looking at the individual types of benefits, old-age benefits (\u20ac2,152 billion, equivalent to 41.5 per cent of total GDP) and those relating to sickness and healthcare (\u20ac1,556 billion, equivalent to 30 per cent of EU GDP) accounted for the largest expenditure items. Other categories included disability benefits, survivors\u2019 benefits, family and child benefits, unemployment benefits, housing benefits, and others. In 2025, expenditure on social protection benefits, expressed in euros, increased in all EU countries<\/strong>. The largest increases compared with 2024 were seen in Croatia<\/strong> (+15.4 per cent), Bulgaria<\/strong> (+12.1 per cent), and Lithuania<\/strong> (+11.6 per cent); the smallest increases were in Greece<\/strong> (+0.6 per cent), Romania<\/strong> (+0.7 per cent), and Finland<\/strong> (+1.3 per cent), while Italy ranked in the middle with an increase of 3.2 per cent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 According to Eurostat, the EU\u2019s statistical office, total expenditure on social protection benefits in the EU reached \u20ac5.183 billion in 2025, representing a 4.9 per cent increase compared with 2024. Social protection (or social security) refers to the set of public or private policies, regulations, and programmes designed to prevent, reduce, or eliminate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7908,"featured_media":470469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"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":[25705,25774],"tags":[35608,1211,1486,2157,28768,4775,1946,2501,5296,255,537],"class_list":["post-470486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-in-brief","tag-agenzia-di-statistica-dellunione-europea","tag-austria","tag-bulgaria","tag-croatia","tag-eurostat-data","tag-finland","tag-greece","tag-irlanda","tag-lithuania","tag-malta","tag-romania"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470486","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\/7908"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470487,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470486\/revisions\/470487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}