The two Wall Street Journal charts below give one a sense of the relative size of the government debt markets in the euro zone as well as the size of those markets compared to each country’s GDP. Estonia has both the smallest government debt market and the lowest debt level as a percentage of GDP. Due to its size, Germany has the largest government debt market in the euro zone. However, Germany’s debt to GDP at 82% is also well over the Maastricht treaty limit of 60% as none of the large euro zone nations fulfil the Maastricht government debt criteria. Greece still has the highest debt to GDP ratio.
