Net international investment position
- Eurostat dataset
- tipsii10
- Reference period
- 2025
- Unit of measure
- % of GDP
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2025): 9.10 % of GDP.
- Highest value: Denmark at 103.3 % of GDP; lowest: Greece at -136.4 % of GDP.
- Cross-country mean -3.39 % of GDP, standard deviation 52.4, coefficient of variation -1544.9% across 27 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2014→2025: -92.0% on a constant panel of 27 countries.
How large are Europe's accumulated external positions? Eurostat dataset tipsii10 reports net international investment position for 27 reporting countries, with 2025 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 9.10 % of GDP. The NIIP is a stock variable: it accumulates decades of external imbalances into a single figure.
The five highest values in 2025 are recorded by Denmark (103.3), Germany (82.3), Malta (78.9), Sweden (58.8), Belgium (52.1), all expressed in % of GDP. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Greece (-136.4), Cyprus (-77.2), Slovakia (-52.4), Portugal (-50.2), Ireland (-47.5). while the median country reports -5.50 % of GDP against a mean of -3.39 % of GDP.
Dispersion is narrow: the standard deviation across countries is 52.4 % of GDP, giving a coefficient of variation of -1544.9%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper 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 -92.0%. The largest relative increases are observed in Austria (+1039.1%), Germany (+188.8%), Denmark (+138.0%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Sweden (-1829.4%), Finland (-645.5%), Italy (-173.7%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Higher values are the policy-preferred direction for this indicator, so the countries listed at the bottom of the distribution mark the effective size of the European gap: closing it to the level of the fifth-ranked country would require the lowest performer to move by 188.5 % of GDP. 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 tipsii10 ('Net international investment position - 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.