More than half (51%) of European Union citizens did not use public transport in 2024, a figure that rises to 68% among Portuguese citizens, Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, reported on Wednesday.
According to Eurostat, the EU countries with the lowest public transport usage in 2024 were Cyprus, where 85% of the population did not use it, followed by Italy and Portugal (both at 68%), France (65%), Slovenia (62%) and Greece (61%). At the other end of the scale were Luxembourg, where only 15.7% of the population did not use public transport in 2024, followed by Estonia and Sweden (both at 27%).
Eurostat also reported that more than a third (35.4%) of online shoppers in the EU said they encountered problems when making purchases through a website or app, with Portugal recording the lowest complaint rate of any member state.
The data comes from a consumer survey on the use of information and communication technologies in the EU, conducted by Eurostat to mark World Consumer Rights Day on Sunday, March 15.
Among EU countries, the highest percentages of customers encountering problems were recorded in Malta (64.0%), the Netherlands (57.9%) and Luxembourg (51.4%), while the lowest were in Portugal (4.5%), Greece (10.6%) and Latvia (13.3%).
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The survey also asked consumers about the specific problems they encountered. The most common was slower-than-expected delivery, reported by one in five (20%) customers, followed by difficulty using or poor website performance (11.5%) and delivery of incorrect or damaged products or services (10.4%).
