Drought left persistent effects across 17.5% of Romania’s territory, new Eurostat yearbook shows

Data for 2024 show that vegetation had not returned to its usual productivity after a severe soil-moisture deficit across 17.5% of Romania’s territory. All NUTS 3 regions in the country recorded some impact, while more than half of the territory was affected in Galați and Botoșani.

The effects of drought on vegetation persisted in 2024 across 17.5% of Romania’s territory, one of the highest shares in the European Union, according to the new edition of the Eurostat Regional Yearbook.

The indicator does not measure the mere absence of rainfall, nor river or reservoir levels. It identifies areas where a severe soil-moisture deficit was followed by vegetation productivity that did not return to reference conditions for the 2000–2020 period.

In brief
In 2024, 17.5% of Romania’s territory recorded persistent effects of drought on vegetation productivity.

Among EU countries, Malta had the highest share, at 57.5%, followed by Bulgaria at 20.1% and Romania at 17.5%.

All of Romania’s NUTS 3 regions had at least part of their territory affected by the drought indicator.

Galați and Botoșani were among the 19 EU regions where more than half of the area was affected.

Caraș-Severin had 977 km² affected, the third-largest absolute area recorded in a NUTS 3 region in the EU.

The data are published in the 2026 edition of the Eurostat Regional Yearbook but describe the situation in 2024. They do not represent an assessment of the current drought situation in Romania.

The indicator combines two conditions. The first is the presence of a severe soil-moisture deficit during the growing season. The second is that vegetation productivity does not return to its reference level after the drought episode.

Productivity is estimated using Earth observation data and compared with conditions during the 2000–2020 period.

This method makes it possible to identify effects that persist in crops, forests, grasslands and other ecosystems, but it does not directly measure farmers’ financial losses or the amount of water available in rivers or lakes.

In 2024, Romania was among the six Member States where the affected share exceeded 10%.

Malta had 57.5%, Bulgaria 20.1%, Romania 17.5%, Cyprus 13%, Greece 11.4% and Italy 10.7%.

The internal distribution is important. Eurostat shows that all NUTS 3 regions in Romania experienced some level of persistent impact.

In Galați and Botoșani, more than half of the total area of the region was affected. The two counties are part of a group of only 19 European regions that exceeded the 50% threshold.

The most extreme situation in the EU was recorded in Sicily. Enna had 95.2% of its area affected, Caltanissetta 89% and Siracusa 87.3%.

When measured by the actual area rather than the share of the territory, a Romanian county again appears among the most affected European regions.

Caraș-Severin had 977 km² of land where vegetation productivity had not returned to reference conditions after the moisture deficit. Only Lovech in Bulgaria, with 998 km², and Lleida in Spain, with 989 km², had larger areas.

At European level, agricultural land accounted for the largest share of the affected area, at 55.9%. Forests and wooded areas accounted for 21.4%, while grasslands represented 9.1%.

These shares show that the indicator is not exclusively agricultural. Drought can also reduce vegetation productivity in natural ecosystems, affecting their capacity to store carbon and provide ecosystem services.

The European Environment Agency notes that the indicator used does not measure hydrological drought. A region may face serious problems with rivers, reservoirs or groundwater that are not fully captured by this method.

Conversely, the presence of an impact on vegetation does not make it possible to directly calculate economic or agricultural losses without additional data.

This week’s news is the publication of the Eurostat regional edition, which compiles and explains the data, not the real-time production of observations for 2026.

For Romania, however, the figures show the territorial scale of the 2024 episode and the significant differences between counties, with Galați and Botoșani exceeding half of their territory and Caraș-Severin ranking among the European regions with the largest absolute affected areas.

https://2eu.brussels/ro/news/seceta-a-lasat-efecte-persistente-pe-175-din-suprafata-romaniei-arata-noul-anuar-eurostat