Eurostat: Passengers at EU ports in 2023 still below pre-Covid levels

In 2023, the EU ports recorded 395.3 million passengers, marking a 5.8 per cent increase compared with 2022 (374 million), EU statistics agency Eurostat said on December 9.

However, the number of passengers was 5.5 per cent lower than the pre-Covid levels of 2019, Eurostat said.

In 2023, 11 countries, each with more than 10 million passengers, accounted for 97 per cent of all seaborne passenger transport in the EU.

Italian ports recorded the highest number of passengers: 85.4 million, or 22 per cent of the EU total.

Greek ports followed with 75 million passengers (19 per cent of the EU total) and Denmark with 41.2 million passengers (10 per cent). 

Comparing 2023 with 2022, the number of seaborne passengers increased in 16 out of the 21 EU countries with available data. The biggest increases were recorded in Italy (+6.5 million passengers), Greece (+4.8 million) and France (+3.2 million).

The top 10 busiest EU passenger ports recorded over one-fifth (22 per cent) of the EU’s seaborne passenger transport. These included six ports in the Mediterranean, three in the Baltic and one in the North-East Atlantic.

Messina in Italy remained the busiest EU passenger port with 11.3 million passengers, followed by Reggio di Calabria in Italy (11.1 million passengers) and Piraeus in Greece (9.6 million).

Compared with 2019, only three out of the top 10 EU ports recorded increases in the number of passengers: Palma de Mallorca in Spain (+0.4 million), Reggio di Calabria in Italy and Piraeus in Greece (+0.2 million each).

(Photo: Brian Burnell)