Greece Owes the World 136% of Its Output. Denmark Is Owed 103%.
Silver Data Lab Research Desk · Statistical analysis · Published on 11 July 2026
This study is open to members only
Its sources, filters and extraction date are declared above, as they are for every study. Sign in to read the analysis in full.
- Data source
- Eurostat
- Reference period
- 2025
- Last updated
- 06 September 2026
Key estimates
- Denmark's net international investment position stood at 103.3% of GDP at the end of 2025 — it owns more abroad than its entire annual output.
- Germany records 82.3% and Malta 78.9%.
- Greece records -136.4%, Cyprus -77.2% and Slovakia -52.4%.
- The distance between Denmark and Greece is close to 240 percentage points of GDP.
- Six Member States sit below -35% of GDP, the threshold the Commission's imbalance procedure uses.
What a country owns abroad, against what the world owns of it
The net international investment position is a stock, not a flow. It adds up everything residents of a country own outside it — foreign shares, bonds, direct investments, deposits — and subtracts everything foreigners own inside it.
A positive figure means a country is a net creditor to the rest of the world. A negative figure means it is a net debtor.
Across the EU at the end of 2025 the positions ranged from +103.3% of GDP to -136.4%.
The creditors
Denmark records 103.3%. Danish residents' net foreign assets exceed a full year of Danish economic output.
Germany follows at 82.3%, Malta at 78.9% and Sweden at 58.8%. These are economies that have run current account surpluses for long periods; a surplus is the annual flow, and this stock is what decades of it accumulate into.
Germany's position is the one with the most weight behind it, because of the size of the economy. It is the world's largest creditor in absolute terms among EU Member States, and the counterpart to the export surpluses it has run since the early 2000s.
The debtors
Greece records -136.4%. Foreigners' net claims on Greece exceed its annual output by more than a third.
Cyprus records -77.2%, Slovakia -52.4% and Portugal -50.2%. Six Member States sit below -35% of GDP.
That threshold is not arbitrary. The Commission's macroeconomic imbalance procedure uses -35% as the indicative level below which a country's external position is flagged for closer examination, and the number of Member States below it is one measure of how much external imbalance the Union is carrying.
Why a large negative position is not automatically a crisis
Greece's figure is the legacy of its sovereign debt crisis and the official lending that followed. A substantial part of the claims on Greece is held by other European governments and institutions on concessional terms with very long maturities, which is a different kind of liability from short-term market debt.
Slovakia's negative position is largely foreign direct investment: factories built by foreign firms count as foreign claims on Slovakia. That is an external liability in the accounting sense and an industrial base in the physical sense, and the two readings point opposite ways.
This is the central difficulty with the indicator. A large negative position can mean a country borrowed to consume, or that it attracted investment to produce. The headline number does not distinguish them, and the composition matters more than the level.
What it is good for
Where the indicator is unambiguous is in showing accumulation. A country cannot run persistent deficits without its position deteriorating, and it cannot reverse a position of -100% of GDP quickly by any means.
It is therefore the measure that shows which imbalances are structural rather than cyclical, and it is the reason a current account deficit in one year is a smaller matter than the same deficit sustained for twenty.
Net international investment position, end 2025
| Country | % of GDP |
|---|---|
| Denmark | 103.3 |
| Germany | 82.3 |
| Malta | 78.9 |
| Slovakia | -52.4 |
| Cyprus | -77.2 |
| Greece | -136.4 |
What these figures cannot tell you
- Composition matters more than level
- A negative position built from foreign direct investment in productive capacity is different from one built from borrowing to consume. Slovakia and Greece both record large negative positions for very different reasons, and the headline figure does not distinguish them.
- No EU aggregate is published
- Eurostat publishes no EU value for this series. Consolidating the Member States would require netting out their claims on each other, which this extraction does not support, so no reference row is shown.
- Valuation moves the stock without any transaction
- The position is measured at market value, so it changes when asset prices and exchange rates move. A country's figure can improve or deteriorate substantially in a year with no change in its borrowing or lending.
- Small economies with large financial sectors
- In Malta, Luxembourg, Ireland and Cyprus the position reflects the activity of internationally oriented financial and corporate structures that are large relative to the domestic economy.
Frequently asked questions
- Which EU country is the biggest net creditor?
- Denmark, whose net international investment position stood at 103.3% of GDP at the end of 2025 — its residents' net foreign assets exceed a full year of national output. Germany follows at 82.3%.
- Which EU country owes the most to the rest of the world?
- Greece, at -136.4% of GDP at the end of 2025. Cyprus follows at -77.2% and Slovakia at -52.4%. A substantial part of the claims on Greece is official lending on concessional terms rather than market debt.
- What counts as a dangerous level?
- The Commission's macroeconomic imbalance procedure uses -35% of GDP as the indicative threshold for closer examination. Six Member States were below it at the end of 2025.
- Is a negative position always bad?
- No. Foreign direct investment counts as a foreign claim, so a country that attracts factories built by foreign firms records a more negative position while gaining productive capacity. Slovakia is the clearest example. Composition matters more than the headline level.
Methodological note
The net international investment position is published by Eurostat as a share of GDP from balance of payments statistics under the BPM6 framework, measured against the rest of the world.
This study uses the end-2025 position, taken from the fourth quarter of the quarterly series, unadjusted. All 27 Member States have published values. Eurostat publishes no EU aggregate for this series, so none is quoted anywhere in this study.
The count of Member States below the -35% threshold and the distance between the highest and lowest are derived by Silver Data Lab. The -35% figure is the indicative threshold used in the Commission's macroeconomic imbalance procedure and is not a Eurostat statistic.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser. The filters below are the ones applied.
Net international investment position, % of GDP
tipsii40
- Filters applied:
- freq=Q · unit=PC_GDP · s_adj=NSA · bop_item=FA · stk_flow=N_LE · partner=WRL_REST · time=2025-Q4
- Extracted:
- 2026-08-11
- Source last updated:
- 2026-07-08
Download the data
The data the study you have just read is built on, exactly as it was downloaded and archived.
Yours as a Member.
Data downloadable by Members
Ask the research desk
A question about this study — a definition, a filter, a break in the series, what the figures can and cannot support — answered by the desk that made the extraction.
Members can write to the research desk