New Europe buys more cars than the West

Baltic, Eastern, and Central European countries experienced higher motorization growth per 1,000 people compared to Western EU countries between 2001 and 2021.

This information is reported by the Slovenian website RTV.

In 2021, the highest level of motorization was observed in the Åland Islands (an autonomous region belonging to Finland) with 845 private cars per 1,000 inhabitants. It was followed by the Flevoland region in the Netherlands with 835 cars per 1,000 inhabitants and the Attica region in Greece with 818 cars.

Data for 2021 was not available for the three provinces in Italy that had the highest level of motorization in the EU in 2020. Three years ago, the statistics revealed the highest level of motorization in Valle d'Aosta (1,787), Trento (1,285), and Bolzano (871).

In Spain, the two regions with the highest number of registered municipal vehicles in 2021 were Andalusia (over 1 million) and Catalonia (845,000). Both of these Spanish provinces play a key role in freight transport in the western Mediterranean region, with direct ferry connections not only to Spanish islands and Ceuta and Melilla but also between Andalusia, Morocco, and Algeria, as well as between Catalonia and Italy.

In 2021, the lowest level of motorization was in the French overseas collectivity of Mayotte, with 78 cars per 1,000 inhabitants. It was followed by the Greek region of Peloponnese (201) and French Guiana (210).

Eurostat also assessed which countries experienced the fastest growth in motorization rates. Romania achieved the highest average annual growth in the number of passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants among EU members from 2001 to 2021, with a rate of 5.4%. Poland ranked second with a growth rate of 4.5%.

In Ukraine, there are currently 245 cars per 1,000 inhabitants. The highest number of cars is in Kyiv with 407 cars per 1,000 inhabitants. Interestingly, over the past year, the number of cars in the Ukrainian capital has increased by 4.1%.

Malta and the Netherlands (both +0.9%), Spain (+0.8%), France and Italy (both +0.7%), Belgium and Austria (both +0.5%), Germany and Luxembourg (both +0.4%), and Sweden (+0.3%) demonstrated average annual growth rates below one percent, according to Eurostat.