One in Six Portuguese Adults Was in Training Last Year, on a Measure Where the Country Sat Below the EU Average Until 2022

For most of the last decade Portugal sat below the European Union average on one of the bloc's headline education measures, and not by a little. In 2015, 9.8 percent of Portuguese adults aged 25 to 64 said they had taken part in education or training in the previous four weeks, against an EU figure of 10.1 percent. Figures published by Eurostat on Monday morning put Portugal at 16.9 percent for 2025, against 13.7 percent for the EU as a whole.

That is a rise of 7.1 percentage points in ten years, against 3.6 points for the EU. Portugal is now one of eleven member states above the average, and the gap runs in the direction it has run since 2022.

What the number actually counts

The indicator is drawn from the EU Labour Force Survey and published by Eurostat as dataset sdg_04_60, one of the measures tracking Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education. It asks people aged 25 to 64 whether they received formal or non-formal education and training in the four weeks before being surveyed. That reference window is short by design, which means a two-day course counts the same as a part-time degree, and it makes the series a snapshot of activity rather than a measure of how much learning anyone completed.

Eurostat records steady growth across the decade with one interruption: the EU figure fell from 10.8 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2020, which the statistics office attributes to the pandemic. Portugal dipped in the same year, from 10.5 to 9.9 percent, then recovered faster than the bloc did. It passed the EU average in 2022, at 13.4 percent against 11.9, jumped again between 2023 and 2024, from 13.3 to 16.1 percent, and added a further 0.8 points last year. Eurostat's release does not explain the Portuguese path.

Sweden at 38 percent, Greece at 5

The spread across the EU is wide. Sweden reported 38.2 percent of adults in training in 2025, Denmark 31.0 percent and Finland 28.1 percent. At the other end, Greece recorded 5.2 percent, Bulgaria 6.1 percent and Croatia 6.5 percent, a seven-fold difference between top and bottom.

Measured by change since 2015, the sharpest climbs were in Malta, up 12.3 points to 19.7 percent, Estonia, up 11.9 points to 23.8 percent, Belgium, up 11.1 points to 18.0 percent, and Slovenia, up 10.9 points to 22.8 percent. Only three countries went the other way: France, down 3.1 points to 15.5 percent, Luxembourg, down 0.6 points to 17.4 percent, and Denmark, down 0.5 points but still third in the EU.

Women, men and where people live

Across the EU, 14.9 percent of women took part in training in 2025 against 12.4 percent of men, a gap of 2.5 points that has widened since 2015, when women's participation grew 4.0 points against 3.2 for men.

The Portuguese gap is wider still. Eurostat puts Portuguese women at 18.2 percent last year and Portuguese men at 15.5 percent, a difference of 2.7 points. In 2015 the two were effectively level, at 9.7 percent for women and 9.8 percent for men, so the entire divergence has opened up inside a decade.

Eurostat also breaks the EU figure down by how urban an area is. Adults in cities and suburbs reported 12.3 percent participation against 10.3 percent in rural areas, a gap the office notes but does not break out by country.

For anyone weighing publicly funded courses in Portugal, the numbers say participation has moved. They say nothing about which courses, or whether they lead anywhere. The last national scheme aimed squarely at adults, the 750 euro digital-training cheque, drew close to 30,000 applications before it closed in August.