Overall, in the EU, government expenditure on fire protection services has remained stable at around 0.4 – 0.5% of total expenditure since 2001.
The EU governments spent €32.9 billion on fire protection in 2020, or an average of 0.5% of total general government spending, according to figures from Eurostat which were released today.
Specifically, according to Eurostat, in 2020 general government spending in the 27 EU member states on “fire protection services” amounted to €32.9 billion, an increase of 6.4% from 2019, when spending was around 30, 9 billion euros. The share in total general government expenditure was 0.5%. Overall, in the EU, government expenditure on fire protection services has remained stable at around 0.4 – 0.5% of total expenditure since 2001.
The share of public expenditure on fire protection as a proportion of total expenditure varies between Member States. In 2020, Denmark recorded the lowest share of expenditure on fire protection services in total expenditure at 0.1%, followed by Iceland at 0.2% and Belgium, Malta, Austria, Portugal and Slovenia at 0. 3% of total general government expenditure. In contrast, Romania had the highest share of expenditure on fire protection services at 0.8%, followed by Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania and Luxembourg at 0.6%.
Besides, according to Eurostat in 2021, about 365 thousand people were employed as professional firefighters in the EU, representing 0.2% of the total employment in the EU.
Estonia, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia (about 0.4% of total employment) recorded the highest proportion of firefighters in their respective workforces.
In terms of age, most of the firefighters are relatively young, with the 35 – 39 and 40 – 44 age groups having the highest numbers, around 61,000 each. There were also over 50,000 firefighters over the age of 55.
Lena Flitzani
Read the News today and get the latest news. Follow us on Google News and be the first to learn all the news from Skai.gr.
