Greece remains significantly behind the rest of the European Union in the way it records and monitors public finances, according to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund.
Unlike most EU countries that have embraced modern accounting standards, Greece continues to rely almost entirely on a cash-based system, recording revenues and expenditures only when money changes hands.
This method stands in stark contrast to the internationally accepted practice of accrual accounting, which records transactions when they are incurred, offering a more accurate and comprehensive view of a country’s fiscal health.
The IMF first evaluated Greece’s progress toward adopting accrual accounting in 2018, and even then, the country ranked near the bottom of the EU. By 2020, Greece’s implementation maturity level had reached only 13 percent—the lowest in the Union. Since then, little progress has been made. As of 2023, the situation remains largely unchanged, and the IMF projects no significant improvement by 2025.
One of the clearest signs of this persistent delay is that Greece has not provided Eurostat with updated data on its public non-financial assets since 2013. This is despite the fact that, under European rules, all member states are required to submit such data from 2021 onward as part of the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010).
Furthermore, the report notes that as recently as 2023, Greece continued to use primarily cash-based figures when submitting fiscal data under the EU’s Excessive Deficit Procedure, a method that creates notable statistical discrepancies.
The IMF estimates that correcting for these inconsistencies could require adjustments amounting to as much as 4.5 percent of the country’s GDP.
Greece remains among a small minority of EU countries unlikely to complete the transition to accrual accounting—whether in terms of technical infrastructure, data systems, or the analytical use of fiscal information. In contrast, 19 of the EU’s 27 member states have either already reached or are close to reaching full implementation of the modern accounting framework.
