In 2024, EU ports recorded 412.3 million passengers, as the sector continued to show signs of recovery after the COVID-affected slump. Passenger numbers were 18.8 million higher than in 2023 (+4.8%), although the overall traffic remained slightly below the 2019 levels (-1.4%).
This information comes from data on maritime passengers published by Eurostat today. This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on maritime passenger statistics.
In 2024, 10 countries, each with more than 10 million passengers, accounted for 95.4% of all seaborne passenger transport in the EU.
Italian ports recorded 93.5 million passengers, or 22.7% of the EU total, followed closely by Greece with 81.1 million passengers (19.7%). Denmark came in third with 41.3 million passengers (10.0%).
Between 2019 and 2024, half of the top 10 countries recorded increases in the number of passengers. Greece gained 7.1 million passengers (+9.7%), Italy 7.0 million (+8.0%) and Malta 2.0 million (+14.9%). In contrast, the largest declines were recorded in Sweden (-5.7 million; -18.7%), Finland (-4.8 million; -25.1%) and Germany (-3.1 million; -9.8%).
Top 3 EU largest passenger ports were in Italy
The top 10 busiest EU passenger ports recorded 22.1% of the EU’s seaborne passengers. These included 7 ports in the Mediterranean, 2 in the Baltic and 1 in the North-East Atlantic. (....)