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What governments spend on police services, as a share of GDP

What share of national income does government spend each year on police services?

30 of 30 shown in the list

% of gross domestic product, general government spending

  1. Romania1.74% 2024
  2. Latvia1.69% 2024
  3. Croatia1.46% 2024
  4. Bulgaria1.39% 2024
  5. Cyprus1.24% 2024
  6. Poland1.21% 2024
  7. Greece1.16% 2024
  8. Spain1.10% 2024
  9. Hungary1.04% 2024
  10. Italy1.02% 2024
  11. Belgium1.01% 2024
  12. France0.98% 2024
  13. Estonia0.97% 2024
  14. Iceland0.95% 2024
  15. Portugal0.94% 2024
  16. Slovakia0.92% 2024
  17. Czechia0.82% 2024
  18. Netherlands0.82% 2024
  19. Sweden0.80% 2024
  20. Austria0.74% 2024
  21. Germany0.74% 2024
  22. Luxembourg0.70% 2025
  23. Malta0.69% 2024
  24. Slovenia0.69% 2024
  25. Switzerland0.67% 2024

Source: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0301, 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 Romania at 1.74% (2024) and the lowest is Ireland at 0.40% (2024).
  • The middle value (the median) is 0.93%.

What it counts

General government spending on the function 'police services' (COFOG 03.1): regular and auxiliary police forces and their support services, 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) GF0301, 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 police services, as a share of GDP [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-police-gdp. Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0301, 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-police-gdp). Data: Eurostat.

BibTeX

@misc{spendingpolicegdp2026,
  author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
  title = {What governments spend on police services, as a share of GDP},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Law in Charts},
  url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-police-gdp},
  note = {Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0301, 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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