1400 firefighters in 2023
General government expenditure on fire protection services in Cyprus in 2022 amounted to 0.4% of the total, i.e. 38.7 million euros, according to data published yesterday, Friday, by the Statistical Service of the European Union (Eurostat), noting that a percentage of 1 .4% or 1400 people were for 2023 the professional firefighters in Cyprus. The total number of professional firefighters in the EU for the same period is 362,400.
According to Eurostat data, professional firefighters in the EU in 2023 represented 0.18% of total employment in the EU, while in compared to 2022, the number of firefighters increased by 3200.
As explained, among the 21 EU countries with available data, the highest percentages of firefighters in total employment were recorded in Croatia (0.49%), followed by Estonia and Greece (0.39%). Cyprus records a rate of 0.31%, while the lowest rates in the EU were recorded in the Netherlands (0.05%), Finland, Slovenia and Sweden (both 0.13%).
It is also noted that at EU level, firefighters aged 30 to 49 made up 61% of all firefighters. Among them, the largest subgroups were people aged 40 to 44 (65,600 firefighters), followed by people aged 35 to 39 (59,100 firefighters).
It is noted that the figures for firefighters in 2023 from the survey EU labor force figures are not shown for Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovakia due to very low data reliability.
At the same time, according to Eurostat data, EU Member State Governments spent €37.8 billion on fire protection services in 2022, showing an increase of 7.8% from 2021 (€35.1 billion).
< p>It is noted that the share of total general government expenditure devoted to fire protection services averaged 0.5% in the EU, while overall, government expenditure on fire protection services remained stable at 0.5% of total expenditure since 2016 .
As reported in the survey, Romania had the highest share of expenditure on fire protection services at 0.7% of total expenditure, followed by Greece, Germany, Lithuania, Estonia and the Czech Republic with 0 .6% each.
It is noted that Cyprus registered a rate of 0.4% or 38.7 million euros for fire protection services.
It is added that in 2022, Denmark reported the lowest percentage of expenditure on fire protection services, at 0.1% of total general government expenditure, followed by Malta, Slovenia, Portugal and Austria at 0.3% each.
