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 economies, covering the 2010 to 2020 period. Employing the Logistic Quantile Regression (LQR) method, we examine whether institutions affect countries equally, when they have low debt levels (are at the lower end of the distribution) compared to countries with high debt levels (are at the higher end of the distribution). Our results indicate that the effect of institutions varies across the distribution of debt. The results suggest that government effectiveness, the control of corruption and the rule of law has a significant impact on countries with low levels of debt in EU nations. In non-EU nations in contrast, government effectiveness, the rule of law and the regulatory quality has the highest impact when debt levels are around their median level. Several robustness checks confirm our findings.