In 2023, there were 362,400 professional firefighters in the EU, representing 0.18% of total employment in the Union. Compared to 2022, the number of firefighters has increased by three thousand.

Of the 21 EU countries for which data is available, the highest proportion of firefighters in total employment was recorded in Croatia.

With a share of 0.49% of firefighters in the total number of employees, Croatia is followed by Estonia and Greece (both 0.39%). The lowest share was recorded in the Netherlands (0.05%), Finland, Slovenia and Sweden (0.13% each).

At EU level, firefighters aged 30 to 49 accounted for 61% of all firefighters. The largest subgroup among them were 40-44 year olds (65,600 firefighters), followed by 35-39 year olds, who accounted for 59,000 firefighters.

In 2022, EU governments spent 37.8 billion euros on fire safety

In 2022, the Union’s total expenditure on “fire protection services” in the 27 EU countries amounted to 37.8 billion euros, 7.8% more than in the previous year.

The share of total expenditure on fire safety was 0.5%.

As the infographic from Eurostat shows, Romania pays its firefighters comparatively the most, followed by the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Germany and Greece.

They are followed by Finland, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Norway, Luxembourg and Bulgaria with 0.5%, which corresponds to the EU average.

Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary and Latvia are below the EU average with 0.4 of government spending on fire protection.

In 2022, Denmark reported the lowest share of spending on fire safety with 0.1% of total government spending, followed by Malta, Slovenia, Portugal and Austria with 0.3% each.