Romania also among the laggards in social benefits

In 2025, Romania spent 17.06 percent of its GDP on social benefits, a smaller share than that recorded only in Ireland, Malta and Hungary, and in euro terms Romanian spending grew by just 0.7 percent, managing to outpace only Greece.

According to Eurostat's preliminary data released on Friday, the Irish spent 11.7 percent of their GDP on social benefits, the Maltese 13.8 percent, and the Hungarians 16.7 percent, while at the other end of the ranking stands Austria with 32.4 percent, narrowly ahead of Finland and France — meaning that the frontrunners spent nearly twice as much relative to the size of their economies as Romania did. Across the EU as a whole, spending rose by 4.9 percent to €5,183 billion, but this amounted to 27.5 percent of the bloc's combined GDP, 0.2 percentage points less than a year earlier, with more than seven-tenths of the total going to just two categories: old-age and healthcare benefits.

There is also a wide gap between the two extremes in the growth ranking, as Croatia increased its spending by 15.4 percent, Bulgaria by 12.1 percent and Lithuania by 11.6 percent, while even Finland's 1.3 percent looks dynamic next to Greece's 0.6 percent and Romania's 0.7 percent. Finland's example also shows how much it matters where one starts from, since even with such a modest increase, the Finns still devoted 32.2 percent of their GDP to this area, whereas Romania combined a far lower spending level with the second-smallest growth in the EU.

Meanwhile, in this year's Romanian state budget, even having enough money to pay pensions through the end of the year has become a separate line item, as the amendment approved on October 30 raised the state transfer to the pension fund by 3.47 billion lei. This sum covers payments already committed, meaning there is now more money in the budget, but pensioners' envelopes will still contain the same amount as before.

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