Greek services exports by sector, 2024

In Greece's services exports by sector, legal services come first. In 2024 37.9% of their revenue came from clients who are not residents of Greece, and 23.3% from clients outside the EU. In accounting firms, clients abroad bring less, 21.6%, and almost all of it from countries outside the EU.

I downloaded all 4,503 cells of the Eurostat table that splits the revenue of service businesses by where the client resides: 12 sectors, 29 countries, from 2021 to 2024. For Greece in 2024 there are eight sectors with total revenue of €10,634.98 million, and 23.1% of it was paid by clients outside the country. Since 2022 this revenue grew 41.7%, and almost all of the growth came from clients in Greece.

Which sector sells abroad

In euros, programming and IT consultancy have the most exports, €1,065.64 million from clients outside the country. Management consultancy follows with €695.96 million. Legal services have the largest share with a much smaller amount, €127.91 million. In employment services almost all revenue stays in the country.

Since 2022 revenue grew inside Greece

2022 is the only earlier year with data for all eight sectors. From then to 2024 their revenue rose from €7,506.39 to €10,634.98 million, +41.7%. Revenue from clients in Greece rose 61.9%, while revenue from abroad stayed almost the same, from €2,456.41 to €2,459.49 million.

The near zero for abroad comes from programming, which lost €188.98 million of foreign revenue. The balance of payments does not show this fall. Without programming, revenue from abroad rose 16.0% and from Greece 52.1%. With both measures, over 90% of the growth came from clients in Greece.

Three sectors grew faster abroad than in Greece: advertising, accounting and legal services. They are the only ones that increased their share from abroad since 2022.

The amounts are nominal. With the GDP deflator, prices rose 9.7% from 2022 to 2024. In real terms revenue from abroad fell 8.7%, and without programming it rose 5.7%.

In accounting, foreign clients are outside the EU

Of the €149.39 million that accounting, auditing and tax firms received in 2024 from clients outside Greece, 132.95 came from countries outside the EU, that is 89.0%. In legal services the ratio is 61.4% and in programming 30.3%.

For these two sectors and for management consultancy, Greece has data only for 2022 and 2024. In 2022 accounting revenue from countries outside the EU was 14.2% of the total and legal revenue 16.8%, so the share rose in both sectors. The balance of payments does not show the rise: exports of legal services outside the EU went from €63.0 to €64.1 million and of accounting services from €22.4 to €22.8 million.

The first explanation that comes to mind is shipping: shipowning companies registered in Liberia or the Marshall Islands, with an office in Piraeus. It is plausible, but the Eurostat table does not say who the clients are. I looked for it in the balance of payments.

Which countries the exports go to

The Bank of Greece sends Eurostat the services exports by client country. The closest code is SJ21: legal, accounting, consulting services and public relations. In 2024 its exports reached €871.0 million, and of these €355.9 million went outside the EU.

First is the United Kingdom with 37.8%, which counts as outside the EU since 2021. The offshore centres, as Eurostat groups them, have 11.1%. They include Liberia, the Marshall Islands and Panama, but also Hong Kong with €18.8 million and Singapore with €5.1 million. Without these two, €15.6 million remain, 4.4% of exports outside the EU.

So shipping may explain a part, but in the numbers it does not show as the main client. It may also hide in the United Kingdom, since chartering and maritime arbitration take place in London. Neither dataset separates it, so shipping clients remain a plausible reading without a measurement.

The code splits into legal and accounting services, but the breakdown by country comes out almost the same: the United Kingdom has 37.8% in legal and 37.7% in accounting. For this reason I read only the total.

The two datasets do not agree on size either. For accounting outside the EU, the business table gives €132.95 million and the balance of payments €22.8 million, 5.8 times less. In legal services they are closer, 78.59 and €64.1 million. The difference is probably a matter of definition: the survey counts all revenue of the firms in the sector, and the balance of payments only the payments for the specific service, from whoever sells it.

Position in the EU

In the share from clients outside the EU, Greek legal services are 3rd of the 20 member states with data for 2024, after Lithuania with 40.0% and Ireland with 36.1%. In the share from all clients abroad they are 4th. Accounting is 6th of 21.

The order holds only among the states that report data. For legal services in 2024, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania and Slovenia are missing. The table has no EU total, so there is no average. In 2022, with a different set of countries, Greece was 5th of 19.

IT: a fall that stayed out

In programming and IT consultancy the share from abroad went from 48.6% in 2022 to 29.8% in 2024. In euros, revenue from clients outside the country fell from €1,462.00 million in 2023 to €1,065.64 million, that is −27.1%.

I put it next to the balance of payments and it does not hold. Exports of IT services in the same year rose from €921.4 to €1,077.7 million, +17.0%. 2024 is the first release for the year and will be revised, so the fall stays out of the findings until the series comes out again.

The first place of legal services also depends on this fall. In 2022 they were third with 37.5%, behind programming and data processing, which had 42.8%. In 2024 their share stayed almost the same and the two IT sectors fell to 29.8% and 30.1%.

Methodology

Sources: Eurostat sbs_part_bscl, net revenue of service businesses in € million split by the residence of the client, and bop_its6_det, Greek services exports by partner country from the balance of payments. Retrieved 15 September 2026. Net revenue, not revenue in the financial statements, and all businesses in the sector, including those who practise the profession as natural persons and do not appear in the financial statements filed with GEMI, the Greek General Commercial Registry.

No Greek cell in the table has a flag for confidentiality, revision or a different definition. The other four sectors, architects, engineers, technical testing and market research, have Greek data only for 2021 and 2023, which is why 2024 has eight sectors. The ranking counts only states with a value: Croatia, Malta and Slovenia do not appear in any year, and Luxembourg is confidential.

The table does not say who the clients are, and the GEMI database does not have the residence of a company's clients, so neither source can test the shipping explanation. The largest open point is the gap with the balance of payments: if that one is right, exports of accounting services outside the EU are €22.8 million and the 89.0% covers revenue of firms with other work included.