• By
  • Sean Carney

As markets ride the roller coaster of sentiment amid the ongoing debt crisis in the euro zone, a fresh bit of news about debt levels was published without fanfare on Thursday.

The former communist countries in the European Union’s eastern flank have yet to catch up with the income levels or economic output per capita of Western Europe, but luckily for those easterners, they are also keeping a lid on their debt levels, unlike the heavily indebted nations of the euro zone.

Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic, respectively, have the lowest private debt as a percentage of gross domestic product in the entire 27-nation European Union, according to a new report from the Czech Statistics Office, or CSU, published Thursday.

Debt held by Slovak households and non-financial businesses amounts to 69% of GDP, in Poland it’s roughly 70%, and in the Czech Republic it’s 72%.

The conservative approach to taking on debt in the EU’s eastern flank sharply contrasts the spendthrift habits that led to the debt crisis engulfing much of Europe and the euro zone in particular.

In Ireland, private debt equals 293% of GDP, and in Cyprus, Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain, private debt exceeds 200% of GDP, the CSU said.

And when looking at comprehensive debt, which includes combined debt of both the public and private sectors, the Czech Republic has the lowest overall debt level of all countries in the EU, the CSU said.