{"id":2205,"date":"2026-04-23T16:04:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=2205"},"modified":"2026-04-23T16:04:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T13:04:00","slug":"new-first-for-greece-in-reducing-public-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=2205","title":{"rendered":"New first for Greece in reducing public debt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Makrane the largest <b>reduction in public debt<\/b> among the 27 member states of the European Union has <b>Greece<\/b> since the outbreak of the pandemic, according to the latest <b>aggregate data<\/b> published yesterday by <b>Eurostat<\/b>, continuing the trend of recent years.<\/p>\n<p>Under the burden of <b>exceptional spending<\/b> and the contraction of economic activity caused by the spread of <b>Covid-19<\/b>, Greece&#8217;s debt reached 212.9% of GDP in the first quarter of <b>2021, more than double<\/b> the EU average, then measured at 91.5%. <\/b><\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/tomanifesto\/images\/placeholder.png\" alt=\"photo-2026-04-23-13-02-451.jpg\" data-dpc-media-id=\"186742\" class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/image\/large\/94\/photo-2026-04-23-13-02-451.jpg\"><\/figure>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/tomanifesto\/images\/placeholder.png\" alt=\"photo-2026-04-23-13-02-44.jpg\" data-dpc-media-id=\"186741\" class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/image\/large\/94\/photo-2026-04-23-13-02-44.jpg\"><\/figure>\n<p>By <b>the end of 2025, however, the ratio of government debt to GDP had been reduced to <b>146.1%,<\/b>which represents a reduction of almost <b>67 points<\/b> in just four years, although at that time the economy was being tested by the <b>double energy<\/b> and supply crisis caused by Russia&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine. <\/b><\/p>\n<p>In practice, this means that <b>GDP to debt ratio<\/b> in Greece has fallen to its best level since the summer of 2010, i.e. since the first memorandum.<\/p>\n<p>This has been achieved thanks to <b>consistent fiscal policy<\/b> that produces <b>surplus budgets,<\/b> the early repayment of loans under the first memorandum and the <b>payment of expensive IMF loans<\/b>, and high growth rates that are boosting GDP. <\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/tomanifesto\/images\/placeholder.png\" alt=\"photo-2026-04-23-15-43-14.jpg\" data-dpc-media-id=\"186751\" class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/image\/large\/94\/photo-2026-04-23-23-15-43-14.jpg\"><\/figure>\n<p>In the same four-year period the European average <b>improved by only 9.8 points, <b>with the result that the gap between our country and the EU was &#8220;trimmed&#8221; to 64.4 points, compared to 121.4 points at the beginning of 2021.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/tomanifesto\/images\/placeholder.png\" alt=\"photo-2026-04-23-15-43-15.jpg\" data-dpc-media-id=\"186752\" class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/image\/large\/94\/photo-2026-04-23-15-43-15.jpg\"><\/figure>\n<p>The <b>only EU country<\/b> that has achieved something comparable to Greece is <b>Cyprus<\/b>, which between 2021 and 2025 managed to improve its GDP to government debt ratio by <b>62.5 points. <\/b><\/p>\n<p>In contrast, <b>eight member states<\/b> saw their debt <b>increase<\/b> over the same period, while strong economies such as <b>Germany<\/b> and <b>France<\/b>, which traditionally have more favourable borrowing rates,<b>reduced their GDP-to-debt ratio<\/b> by just 5.3 and 1.5 points respectively.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/tomanifesto\/images\/placeholder.png\" alt=\"photo-2026-04-23-15-43-15-1.jpg\" data-dpc-media-id=\"186753\" class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/tomanifesto.cachefly.net\/image\/large\/94\/photo-2026-04-23-15-43-15-1.jpg\"><\/figure>\n<p>Note that the <b>structure of Greek debt is favorable<\/b> to the country, as much of it consists of support loans granted during the period of the support programs, as reflected in the <b>ELSTAT<\/b> analysis. <\/p>\n<p>The government&#8217;s goal is to reduce debt to <b>140% of GDP<\/b> in 2027<\/b> and 120% in 2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greece has achieved by far the largest reduction in public debt among the 27 EU member states after the surge in the debt of the &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}