Oktoberfest in Munich, Profee Blog
In 2024, Denmark had an answer. There they canceled the Great Day of Prayer Store Bededag, a 340-year-old Lutheran holiday celebrated on the fourth Friday after Easter to fund defense.
The government in Copenhagen estimated that doing away with the holiday would bring in about 3 billion Danish kroner (400 million euros) in extra tax revenue a year. This was the money needed to bring military spending up to NATO’s target of 2% of GDP, Euronews noted.
The decision passed through parliament in February 2023 and came into force a year later, sparking street protests and a wave of unofficial “sick days” on what became the first canceled holiday.
Denmark is not the only country to take such a step. Portugal canceled four public holidays (two civil and two religious) in 2012 as part of its anti-crisis austerity program.
In 2016, with the toughest phase of budgetary adjustment behind it, they were reinstated.
It proved difficult for economists studying the Portuguese case to isolate the effect of the repeal “purely” because it was deeply embedded in a broader package of reforms. But the political logic was the same as in Denmark.
What the research says
The most convincing cross-country evidence was provided by economists Lucas Rosso and Rodrigo Wagner. They used a natural experiment covering about 200 countries between 2000 and 2019.
When a public holiday falls on a weekend and is not compensated for by a weekday postponement, the country quietly gains one extra working day.
Their calculations showed: each additional non-working day costs about minus 0.08% of annual GDP. This is about half of what a simple “labor” estimate would suggest, since some of the loss is offset by expenditures in the hotel and tourism sectors.
Manufacturing is most affected, while in sectors such as mining or agriculture, where work is almost non-stop, the effect is almost imperceptible.
Germany’s GDP in 2024 exceeds €4.3 trillion, so each working day costs the economy around €3.4 billion before any offsetting factors are taken into account.
For smaller economies, the losses are lower, but in relative terms the impact is just as severe, and there are often even more holidays.
The holiday gap in Europe
The spread of figures between EU countries is impressive.
According to EURES, the portal of European employment services, Lithuania has 15 holidays this year – as many as Cyprus.
At the other pole, Germany has 9 holidays, although individual federal states add their own.
In Denmark, 10 holidays remain after the abolition of Store Bededag – below the European average of 11.7 days, according to Eurostat.
The gap has quite tangible budgetary implications.
According to Rosso and Wagner’s calculations, a country that has 15 holidays instead of 9, annually undercounts about 0.48% of GDP compared to its more “thrifty” neighbor. For Lithuania, whose GDP in 2024 was about 79 billion euros, this means a difference of 360 million euros per year compared to Germany.
The opposite argument: labor productivity
At the same time, economists do not consider weekends as days of “eating up” resources.
An IMF study on Denmark shows that the longer people work, the lower the return. And a well-rested worker is able to maintain higher productivity during the working week.
Rosso and Wagner’s work also showed that years with more holidays are associated with fewer work-related injuries and a marked increase in declared happiness levels in the short run. These factors are not reflected in GDP, but are important for any meaningful assessment of social well-being.
