Greece will cease to be the euro zone's most indebted country by the end of this year as its public debt will fall below that of Italy, according to two Reuters sources and data from Italy's budget plan.

Greek debt is estimated to decline to around 137% of gross domestic product (GDP) this year from 146.1% in 2025, two senior officials said.

By contrast, Italy expects its debt to peak at 138.6% in 2026, up 1.5 percentage points from 137.1% of GDP in 2025, under the Treasury's multi-year budget plan published this week.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, both officials said Greece would cease to be the euro zone's most indebted country from this year.

They said the new estimate for Greece's debt ratio would be included in the country's multi-year fiscal plan to be submitted to the European Commission at the end of this month.

Italy's debt will be roughly stable at 138.5% in 2027, before declining to 137.9% in 2028 and to 136.3% the following year, its budget plan showed.

Greece's public debt, the highest in the euro zone over the last two decades, has shrunk by more than 60 percentage points to 146.1% of GDP last year from a peak of 209.4% in 2020.

In contrast, Italy cut its debt by some 17 percentage points over the same period.

Greece, recovering from a decade-long financial crisis and three bailouts totalling about $327bn, plans to repay ahead of schedule loans worth some $8.2bn from its first bailout later in the year.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni often says that Italy's debt would have started to fall sooner and faster but for the negative impact of state-funded building incentives introduced under her predecessors, Giuseppe Conte and Mario Draghi.

After rebounding strongly from the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy has returned to its customary place among the euro zone's most sluggish performers.

The country posted three consecutive years of sub-1% growth from 2023 to 2025 despite a constant flow of billions of euros from the EU's pandemic recovery funds, a trend that the Treasury's budget plan said would persist through 2029.

Greece's economy grew steadily by more than 2% over the last three years, outstripping the EU average, driven by investments, domestic demand and tourism.

The most and least indebted euro zone countries

According to figures provided by Eurostat, at the conclusion of the fourth quarter of 2025, Greece recorded the highest public debt ratio in the euro zone at 146.1% of GDP, followed closely by Italy at 137.1%.

Other highly indebted nations included France at 115.6%, Belgium at 107.9% and Spain at 100.7%.

Conversely, the lowest debt-to-GDP ratios were observed in Estonia at 24.1%, Luxembourg at 26.5%, Denmark at 27.9% and Bulgaria at 29.9%.

It is important to note that debt is typically measured as a government debt-to-GDP ratio, rather than in absolute terms.

As such, larger economies such as Germany may hold substantial total debt, but their debt-to-GDP ratios are generally more moderate than those of southern European countries.

And how do these figures compare to some of the largest economies around the world?

The United States recorded 125.8% debt-to-GDP ratio, China 106.9%, with Japan's debt sitting at 204.4%, according to the International Monetary Fund.