Unmet Dental Care Needs in the EU: What the 2024 Eurostat Data Shows

What the indicator measures

Unmet need for dental care, in the Eurostat definition, is a self-reported measure. It records whether a person judged that examination or treatment was needed in the previous 12 months and either did not receive it or did not seek it, for one of three stated reasons: financial reasons, waiting lists, or distance from the provider. Dental care here means services provided by or under the direct supervision of dentists and orthodontists.

Two features of the definition matter. First, the denominator is people who needed dental care, not the whole population. Second, the assessment of need is the respondent's own rather than a clinician's, so the indicator captures perceived access rather than diagnosed disease.

Where unmet need concentrates

The distribution across the EU is wide rather than gradual. Greece reported 27.1 per cent in 2024, more than four times the EU figure of 6.3 per cent. Latvia followed at 16.5 per cent and Romania at 16.2 per cent. At the other end, Malta recorded 0.4 per cent, Germany 0.9 per cent and Croatia 1.1 per cent.

A spread from 0.4 per cent to 27.1 per cent within a single statistical framework indicates that national coverage arrangements, rather than any pan-European factor, dominate the result. Dental treatment is funded differently from most other health services in most member states, and the size of the private share differs sharply between them.

The income gradient inside each country

The more consistent finding is not the country ranking but the income gradient that appears within every member state. Across the EU, 13.7 per cent of people at risk of poverty reported unmet dental care need in 2024, against 5.1 per cent of those not at risk. Eurostat records that a similar pattern was registered in all EU countries.

The size of that gradient varies enormously. In Romania, 43.5 per cent of people at risk of poverty reported unmet dental need against 12.6 per cent of those not at risk, a gap of 30.9 percentage points. In Greece the corresponding figures were 52.8 per cent and 22.7 per cent, a gap of 30.1 points. Latvia recorded a gap of 24.5 points and Portugal 20.5 points. Germany, at 1.3 points, Malta at 1.5 and Poland at 1.7 sit at the opposite extreme.

The practical reading is that in some member states income status changes the probability of receiving dental care by a factor of three or more, while in others it barely moves it.

Why this indicator appears in discussions of cross-border treatment

Cost is one of the three reasons the indicator captures, and it is the reason most often cited in commentary that links unmet need to travel for treatment. A population that reports unmet dental need at 27.1 per cent contains a larger pool of people with a treatment need and a cost obstacle than one reporting 0.9 per cent.

That relationship is a plausible mechanism rather than a demonstrated one. The Eurostat series does not ask whether respondents travelled abroad. Countries with high unmet need are not necessarily those generating the most outbound dental travel, because travel also requires disposable income, information and mobility, none of which the indicator measures. The data establishes the size of the unmet need, not what people did next.

Reported figures at a glance

Limitations: what this data does not establish

The indicator is self-reported. It records a respondent's judgement that care was needed and a respondent's account of why it was not received. It does not verify clinical need, and it does not distinguish a postponed check-up from an untreated infection. Two people with identical clinical situations may answer differently.

Comparability across countries is imperfect even within a harmonised survey. Expectations about what constitutes necessary dental care differ, as do assumptions about what treatment normally costs, and both feed into the answer. Eurostat publishes the series as comparable, but the interpretation of the underlying question is not identical everywhere.

The three reasons are grouped. Financial reasons, waiting lists and distance are combined into a single published rate, so a high national figure does not on its own indicate whether the obstacle is price or availability. Separating them requires the detailed dataset rather than the headline release.

The data is national and annual. It says nothing about any individual provider and carries no information about the quality, safety or outcome of treatment received at home or abroad.

Frequently asked questions