Act III · The argumentsStory 21 of 31
Three numbers, one budget
The 2027 budget is reported as about €11 billion, as €14.4 billion and as more than €15 billion. Each can be right. They count different things.
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On 24 September 2026 the budget for 2027 was tabled in Parliament. Within days it had been reported with three different totals. A reader could be forgiven for thinking somebody had made a mistake.
Nobody had. Each figure answers a different question.
€ billion. The bill before Parliament counts loan repayments as spending; the figure usually quoted leaves out debt costs; and the European measure adds the pension and health funds, local authorities and other public bodies.
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Explanatory memorandum to the 2027 State Budget bill, tabled 24 September 2026: expenditure 14,406.6, of which loan repayments and lending 2,523.8 and interest and charges 711.4 (€ million, cash basis). General government: the government's own projection of expenditure in 2027 in the same document, 15,604.8.
What the numbers say
€14.41 billion is the total in the bill itself. It is every euro the central government expects to pay out during the year, and that includes €2.52 billion of loan repayments and lending. Repaying a loan is a payment, so the bill counts it. But it buys nothing: the state borrowed that money and spent it years ago.
€11.17 billion is what is left when the loan repayments and the €0.71 billion of interest are taken out. This is the figure ministers and most headlines use, because it is what the state will spend on salaries, pensions, services and investment.
€15.60 billion is the government's projection for "general government" in 2027. This is the measure European rules use. It leaves out loan repayments, keeps interest, and adds what the budget bill does not cover: the Social Insurance and GESY funds, local authorities, and public bodies with their own budgets.
What it means for you
When two reports quote different totals, check which one each is using before deciding that anything has gone up or down. A comparison is only fair between two numbers of the same kind.
The same care is needed with the surplus and the debt. A surplus quoted as a share of the economy is almost always the European measure. A figure in a Treasury cash report is not, and the two can differ by more than a billion euro in the same year.
What people argue
Which is the real budget? The bill is the legal document, and Parliament votes on its total. But the bill's total rises and falls with the repayment schedule of old loans, which says nothing about what the state is doing this year. The European measure is the only one that covers the whole state and the only one that can be compared with other countries. Its weakness is that it arrives later and is revised.
On this site every figure uses the European measure unless the page says otherwise. That is a choice, and this is the reason for it.
How we know
All three figures come from one document: the explanatory memorandum that accompanies the 2027 State Budget bill. The bill total is 14,406.6 million euro, of which 2,523.8 is loan repayments and lending and 711.4 is interest and charges. What remains is 11,171.4. The general government projection, 15,604.8, is in the same memorandum's medium-term table.
Press reports give the second figure as 11.1 or 11.16 billion. The 11.16 is the same total without 10.8 million of share purchases, which the ministries' spending summary leaves out; our page on the 2027 budget uses it. Some reports put the third figure at 15.8 billion; the memorandum's is 15.6, and we have not traced that difference.