Euro area governments are borrowing faster than their economies are growing again. General government gross debt stood at 88.8 percent of GDP at the end of the second quarter of 2026, up from 88.4 percent at the end of the first quarter and 87.3 percent in the second quarter of 2025, Eurostat said on Wednesday. In the European Union the ratio rose to 82.9 percent, from 82.5 percent in the first quarter and 81.4 percent a year earlier. Debt securities made up 84.5 percent of euro area government debt, loans 13.1 percent and currency and deposits 2.4 percent.
The country split is the rates story. Greece had the highest ratio at 140.8 percent of GDP, followed by Italy at 139.9 percent, France at 119.1 percent, Belgium at 110.2 percent and Spain at 101.4 percent; the lowest were Estonia at 26.1 percent, Denmark at 27.1 percent, Luxembourg at 28.2 percent and Bulgaria at 28.7 percent. Cyprus recorded the largest quarterly fall, down 3.0 percentage points to 48.5 percent, and Greece the largest annual fall, down 11.2 percentage points, which shows the aggregate rise is driven by the large debtors, not the bloc as a whole.
The flow data point the same way. The seasonally adjusted general government deficit was 3.3 percent of GDP in the euro area in the second quarter, and the annual notification confirmed the 2025 deficit at 3.0 percent of GDP for the euro area and 3.1 percent for the EU, with 2025 debt revised to 87.7 percent and 81.5 percent respectively.
Read with Wednesday’s market move, the release explains the pricing rather than competing with it. France’s 10-year yield touched 5 percent with a spread near 157 basis points over Bunds on the same morning Eurostat confirmed its debt at 119.1 percent of GDP and still rising with the bloc. Sovereign spreads in this cycle are being set by debt trajectories, and the trajectories in this release are still pointing up.