Comparison of public spending in France and Europe

This dataset presents the public expenditure of European countries (relating to potential GDP in value terms), according to a specific classification, derived from the classification of the functions of general government. The "public expenditure skyline" is a graphical representation of these data. The term "public expenditure" refers to the expenditure of public administrations, i.e. the State and various central administrative bodies, local authorities (regions, departments, municipalities) and social security bodies (pension funds, Cnam, Cnaf, CCMSA, etc.); it does not include, for example, health reimbursements from mutual societies. Social expenditure corresponds to expenditure codes G11 "Retirement and ageing", G12 "Social aid and replacement income", G21 "Health" and G24 "Aid to the person". For each expenditure item, this dataset makes it possible to compare public expenditure (relative to potential GDP) in a given country with the average of public expenditure in eleven countries in Western and Northern Europe: Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The method used is that implemented in [Gouardo and Lenglart (2019)] (https://www.strategie-plan.gouv.fr/publications/reduce-weight-of-public expenditure). The data cover the period 2012-2023 (2023 is the last year for which the necessary data are available, in December 2025). This dataset is based on data disseminated by Eurostat ([table gov_10a_exp](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table?lang=en)) and the UK Office for National Statistics. The calculations were done by Drees. In this dataset, each line corresponds to a country + year + expenditure category. The country is identified by the variables 'geo' and 'country'. The expenditure category is identified by the variables 'Code' and 'Expenditure'. The variable 'Value' corresponds to the amount of that country's public expenditure in the relevant expenditure item, for the chosen year, relative to potential GDP in value terms (and multiplied by 100). The 'Middle11' column contains the average of the 11 countries (see above) and the 'Middle11' column is the difference between 'Value' and 'Middle11'. For example, in France in 2023, public expenditure on pensions and old age stood at 13.4% of potential GDP (column 'Value'), and at 10.3% of potential GDP on average in the 11 reference countries (column 'Middle11'). Thus, this expenditure is more than 3.1 points in France than in the eleven reference countries (column 'Gap').