EU governments spent 40.6 billion EUR on "fire-protection services" in 2023, reflecting an 8.5% increase in the general government expenditure on this function compared with 2022 (37.4 billion EUR), according to the data published on Tuesday by Eurostat. At the EU level, fire-protection services have consistently accounted for 0.5% of total government expenditure since 2017. Among EU member states, Romania had the highest share of expenditure on fire-protection services of general government