Greece Leading EU Country for Maritime Transport in 2022

Photo source: Eurostat

Greece was one of the EU countries to remain in the lead in terms of maritime passenger transport in 2022, found the European Union’s statistical authority.

According to Eurostat’s maritime transport report, Greece, Italy, and Denmark accounted for nearly half of seaborne passenger transport in the EU in 2022.

Greek ports handled 70.1 million passengers up by 20 percent over the EU total, followed by Italy with 53.8 million (+15 percent), and Denmark with 41.2 million passengers (+12 percent).

Also performing well were the ports of Croatia and Spain with 33.0 million (+9 percent) and 31.3 million (+9 percent) passengers, respectively.

In the same year, the port of Piraeus recorded a 38.5 percent rise in passenger traffic over 2021.

Overall, according to Eurostat data, last year, EU ports continued their post-Covid recovery with maritime passenger transport reaching 348.6 million passengers and increasing by 30 percent over 2021 (267.9 million passengers), and by 51 percent increase over 2020 (230.1 million).

However, Eurostat analysts note that 2022 performance is still down by 17 percent over pre-Covid 2019.

Compared to 2021, the number of seaborne passengers increased in 18 out of the 21 EU countries in 2022 with Greece marking the biggest rise up by 34 percent and 17.8 million passengers; followed by Spain (+12.4 million / +66 percent), Germany (+8.2 million / +42 percent), and France (+8.0 million / +73 percent).

Top 5 busiest EU passenger ports

At the same time, four of the Top 5 busiest EU passenger ports were in the Mediterranean and one in the Baltic Sea – all reporting increases in passenger traffic compared to 2021.

The largest EU passenger port in 2022 was Messina (Italy) with 9.4 million passengers. Next in line was Reggio di Calabria also in Italy with 8.8 million passengers, Piraeus in Greece with 8.3 million, Helsinki (Finland) with  (8.0 million), and Palma de Mallorca (Spain) with 7.7 million passengers.

Compared to 2019, passenger traffic at all five ports was down by 31.5 percent for Helsinki, 19.3 percent for Messina, 18.8 percent for Reggio di Calabria, 11.4 percent for Piraeus, and by 2.1 percent for Palma de Mallorca.