Financial, Public and Regional Economics

Abstract

The state budget is a financial plan at the macroeconomic level, and it is designed as a set
of accounts of the nation, which reflects the current year and next year projections on all economic
agents in the country / region. The size of the public sector varies significantly from one Member
State to another, which means that the financial resources available to the public sector differ
substantially at the European Union level. The paper includes an analysis of the evolution of the main
indicators corresponding to public financial resources at EU level achieved between January 2009 -
December 2012 or December 2013, where data processing was available. The information was taken
from the Eurostat statistics database. The research methodology used in this work was done by the
use of indicators: the share of total public revenue in GDP; the share of taxes in GDP of production
and imports; the share of current taxes on income, wealth etc. in GDP; the share of social security
contributions in GDP. In the analysis there were considered, of the total financial resources of
government, only the taxes levied on production and imports, current taxes on income, wealth etc.
and social security contributions. In conclusion, the share of government revenues in GDP increases,
but there are states where it decreases, such as Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Germany and
Sweden. The public financial resources share in GDP at the level of the Eurozone was always higher
in relation to the entire European Union, but always keeping the difference around 0.8 to 0.9
percentage points. France recorded the highest share of social security contributions in GDP (18.8%
in 2009 and 19.4% in 2013) while Denmark has the lowest share of these financial resources in GDP,
i.e. only 1.9% in 2009 and 1.8% in 2013.