Denmark Runs a 12.5% Current Account Surplus. Romania Runs a 7.9% Deficit.
Silver Data Lab Research Desk · Statistical analysis · Published on 11 July 2026
- Data source
- Eurostat
- Reference period
- 2025
- Last updated
- 17 August 2026
Key estimates
- Denmark ran a current account surplus worth 12.5% of GDP in 2025, the largest in the Union.
- Malta records 8.6%, Ireland 8.2% and the Netherlands 7.6%.
- Romania records a deficit of 7.9%, Cyprus 6.4% and Greece and Bulgaria 5.7% each.
- Ten Member States ran deficits and seventeen ran surpluses.
- The Commission's thresholds are a surplus above 6% and a deficit below -4%; nine Member States sit outside that band.
The annual flow behind the accumulated stock
The current account records what a country earns from the rest of the world against what it pays out: trade in goods and services, income on investments, and transfers. A surplus means money coming in on net; a deficit means the reverse.
Where the net international investment position is the accumulated stock, this is the annual flow that builds it. A country running persistent surpluses becomes a creditor; one running persistent deficits becomes a debtor.
In 2025, seventeen Member States ran surpluses and ten ran deficits.
The surpluses
Denmark records 12.5% of GDP, the largest in the Union and double the Commission's 6% threshold.
Malta at 8.6%, Ireland at 8.2%, the Netherlands at 7.6% and Germany follow. Denmark's surplus is consistent with its creditor position of 103.3% of GDP: the flow and the stock tell the same story about the same economy.
A large surplus is treated as an imbalance in the Commission's framework, which is counterintuitive if a surplus is read as success. The reasoning is that a country running a persistent large surplus is consuming and investing less than it produces, which suppresses demand for its trading partners and, within a currency union, cannot be corrected by an exchange rate movement.
The deficits
Romania records -7.9%, the largest deficit in the Union, followed by Cyprus at -6.4%, Greece and Bulgaria at -5.7% each.
Romania's position is the one that has changed most. It combines a persistent trade deficit with strong domestic demand, and the deficit has been financed rather than corrected. Its net investment position has deteriorated accordingly.
Greece's deficit sits on top of the Union's most negative investment position, which is the combination the imbalance procedure is designed to detect: a stock already deeply negative and a flow still adding to it.
What the framework is for
The macroeconomic imbalance procedure was created after the euro crisis, when it became clear that current account divergence inside a currency union had gone unmonitored while fiscal deficits were watched closely. Several countries that entered the crisis worst placed had complied with the fiscal rules and run current account deficits of 10% of GDP or more for years.
The asymmetric thresholds — surpluses tolerated to 6%, deficits only to -4% — reflect a judgement that deficits are the more immediate risk, since a deficit country depends on continued willingness to lend and a surplus country does not.
Whether that asymmetry is correct has been argued since it was set. The data here does not settle it, and this study does not attempt to.
Where the two ends meet
Neither end of this ranking is close to balance. Denmark at +12.5% and Romania at -7.9% are twenty points of GDP apart, inside a single market with, for twenty of them, a single currency.
Current account balance, 2025
| Country | % of GDP |
|---|---|
| Denmark | 12.5 |
| Malta | 8.6 |
| Ireland | 8.2 |
| Bulgaria | -5.7 |
| Cyprus | -6.4 |
| Romania | -7.9 |
What these figures cannot tell you
- A single year
- Current accounts move with commodity prices, one-off transactions and the timing of large investments. What matters for imbalance is persistence, and a single year's reading cannot show it. The investment position study on this site reports the accumulated stock.
- No EU aggregate is published
- Eurostat publishes no EU value for this series. Summing the Member States would count intra-EU flows on both sides, so no reference row is shown.
- Ireland and the small financial centres
- Irish, Maltese and Luxembourg balances are affected by the operations of multinational and financial entities whose flows are large relative to the domestic economy. Their figures are correct and do not describe domestic saving behaviour.
- The thresholds are policy, not statistics
- The +6% and -4% bounds come from the Commission's imbalance procedure scoreboard, not from Eurostat. They are judgements about risk, and the asymmetry between them has been contested since it was adopted.
Frequently asked questions
- Which EU country has the largest current account surplus?
- Denmark, at 12.5% of GDP in 2025 — double the Commission's 6% threshold. Malta at 8.6%, Ireland at 8.2% and the Netherlands at 7.6% follow.
- Which EU country has the largest deficit?
- Romania, at -7.9% of GDP in 2025, followed by Cyprus at -6.4% and Greece and Bulgaria at -5.7% each.
- Why is a large surplus treated as an imbalance?
- Because a country running a persistent large surplus is consuming and investing less than it produces, which reduces demand for its trading partners. Inside a currency union that cannot be corrected by an exchange rate movement, which is why the Commission monitors surpluses above 6% of GDP as well as deficits.
- How many EU countries run current account deficits?
- Ten in 2025, against seventeen in surplus. Nine Member States sit outside the Commission's threshold band of +6% to -4%.
Methodological note
The current account balance is taken from Eurostat's balance of payments statistics under BPM6, expressed as a share of GDP, unadjusted, against the rest of the world.
Values are for 2025 and cover all 27 Member States. Eurostat publishes no EU aggregate for this series, so no reference row is shown and no EU figure is quoted.
The counts of Member States in surplus and deficit, and of those outside the Commission's threshold band, are derived by Silver Data Lab. The +6% and -4% thresholds are from the macroeconomic imbalance procedure scoreboard and are not Eurostat statistics. The comparison with net investment positions draws on the companion study in this category.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser. The filters below are the ones applied.
Main Balance of Payments items as share of GDP (BPM6)
bop_gdp6_q
- Filters applied:
- freq=A · unit=PC_GDP · s_adj=NSA · bop_item=CA · stk_flow=BAL · partner=WRL_REST · time=2025
- Extracted:
- 2026-08-11
- Source last updated:
- 2026-07-08
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