The unprecedented rise in debt levels across countries has given rise to the role of institutions on public debt. This study examines the impact of institutions on government debt in a sample of 54 EU and non-EU countries, covering the 2010 to 2022 period, employing the Logistic Quantile Regression (LQR) and Recentered Influence Function (RIF) method, Our results indicate that the effect of institutions varies across the distribution of government debt. The results show that government effectiveness, regulatory quality, voice, and accountability have similar effects in the EU and non-EU countries. However, political stability and the control of corruption have a significant and debt reducing effect only in EU countries. Robustness checks confirm our findings.