Public finance is an important sector of every country in the world that is responsible for collecting public revenues and spending in the form of public expenditures to meet public needs. At the moment when the situation occurs that public revenues are less than public expenditures, the result is a government deficit. Then the state starts with an instrument called indebtedness, and a public debt arises. The public debt of a country tells the state of indebtedness at a specific time. In the world, when it comes to the finances of a country, public debt is almost always mentioned. Precisely because of the importance of public debt, the basic features of public debt, its management, the advantages of public debt, but also the impact of the economic crisis on public debt were presented. During the paper, many scientific methods were used, most of which, the method of description and compilation in the theoretical part, and in the research part of the paper, the method of analysis was used the most. The aim of the analysis of the public debt of the Republic of Croatia and Denmark for the period from 2008 to 2018 is to determine the impact of the crisis on the public debt of these countries. The structure of public debt, the structure by borrowing instruments, currency and interest rate structure were analyzed in order to obtain a more detailed insight into the individual public debt of each country. The comparative analysis concluded which country responded better to the 2008 crisis and what impact this had on the overall public debt of these countries. At the end, the conclusions were presented, but also the issues that remained open