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What governments spend on law courts, as a share of GDP

What share of national income does government spend each year on the law courts?

30 of 30 shown in the list

% of gross domestic product, general government spending

  1. Bulgaria0.73% 2024
  2. Poland0.53% 2024
  3. Latvia0.50% 2024
  4. Croatia0.46% 2024
  5. Malta0.44% 2024
  6. Slovenia0.44% 2024
  7. Romania0.41% 2024
  8. Germany0.37% 2024
  9. Italy0.35% 2024
  10. Greece0.34% 2024
  11. Spain0.34% 2024
  12. Slovakia0.32% 2024
  13. Estonia0.30% 2024
  14. Austria0.29% 2024
  15. Czechia0.29% 2024
  16. Hungary0.29% 2024
  17. Netherlands0.29% 2024
  18. Portugal0.29% 2024
  19. Switzerland0.29% 2024
  20. France0.28% 2024
  21. Luxembourg0.26% 2025
  22. Sweden0.26% 2024
  23. Belgium0.24% 2024
  24. Finland0.24% 2024
  25. Lithuania0.24% 2024

Source: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0303, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp). Data for 2024 to 2025. What it counts, how to cite it and the data

At a glance

  • 30 countries or territories have a figure.
  • The highest is Bulgaria at 0.73% (2024) and the lowest is Norway at 0.13% (2024).
  • The middle value (the median) is 0.29%.

What it counts

General government spending on the function 'law courts' (COFOG 03.3): the running of the civil and criminal courts and the judicial system, including legal representation and advice that government provides, divided by gross domestic product.

What it leaves out, and how far to trust a comparison

The figure is general government spending (central, regional and local together) as a share of the country's gross domestic product of the same year. A rich country can spend more per person and less as a share of its income, and the reverse, so read it together with the figure per inhabitant. Countries fund and classify some activities differently.

Source

Eurostat: General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0303, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp). Source licence: CC BY 4.0. Data retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.

Cite this chart

Free to use in teaching, articles, reports and slides, with credit. Our compilation is licensed CC BY 4.0; the source publishes the underlying data under its own licence, shown below.

Reference (APA style)

TheLawToKnow. (2026). What governments spend on law courts, as a share of GDP [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-law-courts-gdp. Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0303, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table (data retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25).

Short credit for slides and websites

Chart: TheLawToKnow, Law in Charts (https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-law-courts-gdp). Data: Eurostat.

BibTeX

@misc{spendinglawcourtsgdp2026,
  author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
  title = {What governments spend on law courts, as a share of GDP},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Law in Charts},
  url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-law-courts-gdp},
  note = {Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0303, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table. Retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.}
}

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