Half of Greeks cannot cover an unexpected expense, according to fresh Eurostat data, and no other country in the Europea...

Half of Greeks cannot cover an unexpected expense, according to fresh Eurostat data, and no other country in the European Union has it worse. The 2025 survey found 50.5% of people in Greece were unable to pay for something as basic as a car repair or a doctor's visit if it came up without warning. That is up sharply from 43.9% in 2024 and nearly double the EU average of 29.2%. The numbers go beyond one bad data point. Nearly half of Greeks, 46.6%, cannot afford even a single week of vacation, a figure that crept higher compared to the year before. On that measure, only Romania ranks worse across the entire bloc, at 61.4%, against an EU average of 27.5%. The poverty picture is just as stark. Eurostat put 27.5% of Greece's population at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2025, the second-highest rate in the EU behind Bulgaria at 29%. Greece's GDP per capita measured in purchasing power parity, which adjusts for what money actually buys, finished last in the EU alongside Bulgaria, sitting 32% below the European average. What makes that figure particularly striking is the comparison to 2015. Greece's purchasing power today is actually slightly lower than it was during the height of the country's austerity years, a period widely described as the most economically painful in modern Greek history. The country has gone through two governments since then, multiple wage increases, and billions in EU recovery funds. Prices in Greece did rise closer to the EU average, reaching 84% of it in 2025, which means Greeks are paying more European-level prices on incomes that remain far below European averages. All of this was measured before the economic ripple effects of the war in the Middle East began feeding into the Greek market. #Greece #Economy #Eurostat