site.btaBulgaria among Nine EU Member States to Decrease Greenhouse Gas Emissions while Growing GDP in Q3 of 2025

Bulgaria was one of the nine European Union Member States that decreased seasonally-adjusted greenhouse gas emissions in the third quarter of 2025 while growing or maintaining their gross domestic product (GDP) levels, show Eurostat data published on Friday. The others were Estonia, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia.

Lithuania was the only Member State that registered a decrease in emissions but coupled with decline in GDP.

EU economy’s seasonally adjusted greenhouse gas emissions in this period were estimated at 828 million tonnes of CO2-equivalents (CO2-eq), a 1.1% increase compared with the second quarter of 2025. At the same time, the EU’s GDP increased by 0.4% in the third quarter of 2025, compared with the previous quarter of 2025. 

The economic sectors with the largest increases in greenhouse gas emissions in EU were households (+3.6%) and manufacturing (+1.4%). Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (-0.8%) was the only sector that recorded a decrease.

Between July and September 2025, greenhouse gas emissions in Bulgaria fell by 3.43% compared to the previous quarter, when a 9.3% decline was recorded. At that time, the country ranked first in the EU in terms of emissions reduction, according to BTA check in the Eurostat database.

The data show that although most Member States (17 in total) saw an increase in emissions in the third quarter of 2025, a significant group of 10 countries, including Bulgaria, managed to reverse the trend. In nine of them, this is happening in parallel with economic growth or the maintenance of economic volumes, which is an indicator of the existence of a trend towards economic development without an increase in carbon emissions.