Romania spent only EUR 340 per inhabitant on health in 2015, the lowest sum in the European Union, where the average was EUR 600 per inhabitant, according to the latest Eurostat statistics on health expenditure.
Eurostat says that Member States spent over EUR 1,058 billion on health billion of general government expenditure in 2015. This figure is equivalent to 7.2% of the EU’s GDP. ‘Health’ is the second largest item of public expenditure, after ‘social protection’ (19.2%).
The ranking is quite different when the amounts spent are compared with the population of each Member State. On average in 2015, expenditure on health amounted to EUR 2,076 per inhabitant in the EU.
The Member States that spent above €3000 per inhabitant were Luxembourg (EUR 4112), Denmark (EUR 4094), the Netherlands (EUR 3194), Sweden (EUR 3170), Austria (EUR 3149), Ireland (EUR 3138) and the United Kingdom (EUR 3020).
At the opposite end of the scale, spending stood below €600 per inhabitant in Romania (EUR 340), Bulgaria (EUR 343), Latvia (EUR 468), Poland (EUR 520), Cyprus (EUR 532) and Hungary (EUR 592).
In 2015, the ratio of government expenditure for health to GDP varied across EU Member States. At the lower end was Cyprus (2.6%), followed by Latvia (3.8%), Romania (4.2%), Greece (4.5%), Luxembourg (4.6%) and Poland (4.7%). In contrast, Denmark (8.6%), France (8.2%), Austria and the Netherlands (both 8.0 %) spent the most in relative terms.