EU governments spent 40.6 billion EUR on "fire-protection services" in 2023, reflecting an 8.5% increase in the general government expenditure on this function compared with 2022 (37.4 billion EUR), according to the data published on Tuesday by Eurostat.
At the EU level, fire-protection services have consistently accounted for 0.5% of total government expenditure since 2017. Among EU member states, Romania had the highest share of expenditure on fire-protection services of general government total expenditure (0.9% increasing from 0.7% in 2022), followed by Estonia and Greece with 0.7% each, agerpres reports.
By contrast, Denmark reported the lowest share of expenditure on fire-protection services (0.1%), followed by Malta (0.2%), Portugal and Austria (both 0.3%).
According to Eurostat data, in 2024, there were 390,600 professional firefighters in the EU, representing 0.19% of the total EU employment. Compared with 2023, the number of firefighters increased by 28,200.
Among the 20 EU countries with available data, Croatia registered the highest share of firefighters in total employment (0.45%), followed by Greece with 0.41%, Czechia with 0.34%, Latvia (0.31%) and Romania (0.30%).
In Romania, in 2023, there were 23,500 professional firefighters, representing 0.30% of the total employed population, which stood at 7.853 million people.
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