6% experience unmet dental care needs in the EU

In 2024, 6.3% of people aged 16 years or older in the EU who needed a dental care reported that they were unable to receive it due to financial reasons, long waiting lists or distance from the dental providers.

Among EU countries, the share of people with unmet dental care needs was the highest in Greece (27.1%), Latvia (16.5%) and Romania (16.2%). The lowest were observed in Malta (0.4%), Germany (0.9%) and Croatia (1.1%).

Data show that the share of people at risk of poverty who reported unmet dental care needs in 2024 was substantially higher, at 13.7%, than that of those not at risk of poverty, at 5.1%. A similar pattern was registered in all EU countries.

Source dataset: hlth_silc_09b

The most significant differences in reporting unmet needs for dental care were observed in Romania, where 43.5% of people at risk of poverty reported such unmet needs compared with 12.6% among those not at risk, a gap of 30.9 percentage points (pp); and in Greece, where 52.8% of people at risk of poverty reported unmet dental care needs compared with 22.7% among those not at risk, a gap of 30.1 pp. Large differences were also observed in Latvia (24.5 pp) and Portugal (20.5 pp).

In contrast, Germany (1.3 pp), Malta (1.5 pp) and Poland (1.7 pp) recorded the narrowest gaps between the rates of unmet dental care needs among people at risk of poverty and those not at risk of poverty.