More than half of Bulgarians cannot afford a week’s holiday away from home – Eurostat
More than half of Bulgarians cannot afford a week’s holiday away from home, making them among the worst-off in the European Union in this regard, according to figures released by EU statistics agency Eurostat on July 31.
However, the 56.4 per cent of Bulgarians who do not have the money to go away for a week represent an improvement of the position compared with the six years before 2016.
In 2010, the figure was 62.4 per cent of Bulgarians, rising to 73.3 per cent in 2011 and 74 per cent in 2012. The figure for 2016 also is a drop compared with the 60.4 per cent of Bulgarians who said in 2015 that they could not afford a week’s holiday.
For many people in the EU), summer means holidays and travel. But a third (32.9 per cent) of the EU population cannot afford a one-week annual holiday away from home, Eurostat said.
Slightly more households with dependent children (34.6 per cent) than those without (31.3 per cent) find themselves in this situation.
Sweden (8.2 per cent), ahead of Luxembourg (13.1 per cent in 2015), Denmark (13.7 per cent), Finland (14.2 per cent), Austria (15.4 per cent) and the Netherlands (16.2 per cent) were the EU countries with the lowest percentage of people unable to afford such a one-week holiday, Eurostat said.
At the opposite end of the scale, more than six in 10 people could not afford a one-week annual holiday away from home in Romania (66.6 per cent) and Croatia (62.8 per cent). More than half the population in Bulgaria (56.4 per cent), Greece (53.6 per cent), Cyprus (53.5 per cent in 2015) and Hungary (50.7 per cent) were also in this position.
Over the past five years, the proportion unable to afford a one-week annual holiday away from home decreased in all EU countries, except Cyprus (from 47.6 per cent in 2011 to 53.5 per cent in 2015), Denmark (from 10.5 per cent in 2011 to 13.7 per cent in 2016) and Greece (from 51.2 per cent in 2011 to 53.6 per cent in 2016).
The most notable decrease was registered in Latvia (from 63.4 per cent in 2011 to 37.1 per cent in 2016, or -26.3 percentage points – pp), followed by Poland (-19.3 pp), Estonia (-18.6 pp), Bulgaria (-16.9 pp), Malta (-16.7 pp) and Hungary (-15.6 pp).
At EU level, the share of population who could not afford a one-week annual holiday away from home decreased by 5.1 percentage points between 2011 and 2016, from 38 per cent to 32.9 per cent, Eurostat said.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
/Panorama
