Sweden, Belgium and Finland biggest spenders on education and research in Europe

Sweden, Belgium and Finland were the three European countries with the highest public expenditure as a proportion of GDP on education and research (8.57%, 7.09% and 7.03% respectively) in 2023, according to the France's Directorate for Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Direction de la recherche, des études, de l’évaluation et des statistiques).

The French institution has published open data on public expenditure in Europe, showing public expenditure (relative to the GDP) for education and research in 30 European countries, since 2012. With the most recent year being 2023, the data were published on 20/11/2025.

The data also compares national expenditure to the European average for each year: for 2023, the average was 5.62%, slightly up from 5.61% in 2022. However, it was 6% in 2012 and was followed by a steady decline to an all-time low in 2022.

During this period, some countries stayed way above the European average (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland), while others stayed below (Greece, France, Czechia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary…