Covid-19 crisis
Europe spent the pandemic buying time with money: wage support, test and vaccination programmes, and a €800bn recovery facility financed with joint debt. Five years on the crisis still shows up every year as interest on that debt, as care postponed and never caught up, and as several million people whose working capacity never fully returned.
Accrued this year
€168,561,107,834
€6,227 /sec
Per citizen
€375.41
€438 per year
Per household
€855.64
€997 per year
Cost timeline
Modelled yearly cost across the EU, 2015–2026.
Figures are EU-wide and divided equally across 449 million residents.
Cost per worker by EU country
Model: EU-wide bill split by contribution key (GNI share; Netherlands 6.2%), divided by the labour force. Indicative.
Direct costs
€89.5 bn/yrMoney that leaves a public budget or an invoice.
- Interest and repayment on pandemic recovery debt€34.0 bn
NextGenerationEU plus national emergency borrowing
- EU joint bonds: NGEU and SURE repayment and interest€30.0 bn
~€650bn NGEU + €98bn SURE, repaid 2028–2058
- Care backlog: postponed treatment and surgery€19.0 bn
- Vaccination, surveillance and pandemic preparedness€6.5 bn
Indirect costs
€107.0 bn/yrPrices, productivity and welfare effects citizens absorb.
- Excess SME and retail defaults on pandemic loans€14.0 bn
Called state guarantees and written-off support loans
- Imposed measures and lockdowns: care and disability costs€26.0 bn
- Lost labour supply from long-term illness€31.0 bn
- Learning loss in the pandemic school cohorts€24.0 bn
- Mental health and excess care demand€12.0 bn