Filenews 20 November 2025 - by Theano Thiopoulou
Although in the last ten years the ability of Cypriots to pay their debts has improved significantly, not only to banks but also to rent, utility bills, the default rate in Cyprus is still above the European average, according to data released yesterday by Eurostat.
Another important element is that households may be doing relatively well with fixed expenses, but one in three Cypriots cannot manage extraordinary expenses.
According to Eurostat, almost one in 10 (9.2%) of the EU population had arrears on mortgages or rents, utility bills or instalment payments in 2024, but this proportion was almost double (17.2%) among people living in single-parent households with dependent children. It was also significantly higher (16.6%) for people living in households consisting of 2 adults with 3 or more dependent children. In all EU countries, the proportion of single-parent households in arrears was higher than for the total population.
As far as Cyprus is concerned, the 19.1 percentage point improvement recorded from 2015 to 2024 in the percentage of the population that has arrears on mortgages or rents, utility bills, did not help Cypriot households to leave the top five countries with the highest rate of arrears. In Cyprus, up to 12.5% of the population had unpaid mortgages or rents, as well as overdue utility bills in 2024. By far the first is Greece, where the percentage of the population that was in arrears with mortgage or rent payments was the highest in Europe (42.8%). They are followed by Bulgaria with 18.7%, Romania 15.3%, Spain 14.2%, Cyprus 12.5%, Ireland 12.2%, Finland 11.2%, France 10.6%. In contrast, 19 of the 27 EU countries recorded a rate of less than 10.0%. The Czech Republic with 3.4% and the Netherlands with 3.9% were the EU countries where the percentage of the population with arrears on debts was the lowest.
The overall share of the EU population in arrears on mortgages or rents, utility bills or instalment payments decreased by 2.6 percentage points between 2015 and 2024. However, the percentage increased in 9 EU countries. This was the case in Luxembourg (an increase of 3.3 percentage points), Spain (+2.5 percentage points) and Germany (+2.0 percentage points).
The strain on extraordinary expenses
Another important element of the report published by Eurostat concerns what happens to economic insecurity, which is measured by the percentage of the population that is unable to cope with unforeseen financial expenses.
In 2024, 30% of the EU population said they could not cope with extraordinary financial expenses. This is an improvement of 1.2 percentage points from 2023 and 7.4 percentage points compared to a decade ago. In Cyprus, 34.8% of the population could not face extraordinary expenses in 2024, but a percentage much lower than in 2015 when it was 60.5%.
No EU country had more than half of its population facing economic insecurity, which is an improvement on 2015, when the percentage of the population experiencing economic insecurity was over 50% in 9 EU countries.
