Current account balance: three-year moving average
- Eurostat dataset
- tipsbp20
- Reference period
- 2025
- Unit of measure
- % of GDP
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2025): 1.90 % of GDP.
- Highest value: Denmark at 12.5 % of GDP; lowest: Romania at -7.90 % of GDP.
- Cross-country mean 1.09 % of GDP, standard deviation 4.93, coefficient of variation 453.9% across 27 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2014→2025: -40.7% on a constant panel of 27 countries.
Which economies sit outside the MIP current account thresholds? Eurostat dataset tipsbp20 reports current account balance: three-year moving average for 27 reporting countries, with 2025 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 1.90 % of GDP. The MIP evaluates the current account as a three-year average precisely to filter cyclical noise.
The five highest values in 2025 are recorded by Denmark (12.5), Malta (8.60), Ireland (8.20), Netherlands (7.60), Sweden (6.70), all expressed in % of GDP. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Romania (-7.90), Cyprus (-6.40), Greece (-5.70), Bulgaria (-5.70), Slovakia (-3.60). while the median country reports 1.10 % of GDP against a mean of 1.09 % of GDP.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 4.93 % of GDP, giving a coefficient of variation of 453.9%. The mean sits below the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the lower tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2014 and 2025 the summed value across the 27 countries reporting in both periods moved by -40.7%. The largest relative increases are observed in Romania (+2533.3%), Greece (+714.3%), Portugal (+300.0%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Croatia (-1266.7%), Bulgaria (-371.4%), Belgium (-337.5%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
This indicator has no normatively preferred direction; its analytical value lies in the structure of the distribution and in how national positions move relative to each other over time. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset tipsbp20 ('Current account balance - annual data'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-07-08. Filter dimensions: no dimension filters applied. Unit of measure: % of GDP. Reference period: 2025. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (27 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.