The sovereign debt of the countries in the eurozone rose sharply in the second quarter. Because governments borrowed a lot of money to combat the consequences of the corona crisis, the debt rose to an average of 95.1 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), the European statistics agency Eurostat calculated. In the first quarter this was still 86.3 percent.
–
The increase in national debt is not only due to higher expenditure. The economic contraction in many countries also plays a role. The budget deficit was also considerably higher in the second quarter, to an average of 11.6 percent compared to 2.5 percent in the first quarter. That is the strongest quarterly increase ever recorded and also the highest budget deficit ever recorded. All nineteen euro area countries had more expenditure than income. Government expenditure in the eurozone rose to an average of 59 percent of GDP. At the beginning of this year, that was 49.3 percent.
Belgium has a budget deficit of 14.2 percent and a national debt of 115.3 percent of GDP among the worst students in the European class. The newspaper De Tijd reported on Thursday that the Belgian national debt exceeded 500 billion euros for the first time in the second quarter.
–
