Romania lags in Europe by car ownership rate

Romania had the lowest number of passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants in the European Union, in 2017, namely 261 cars per thousand inhabitants. Hungary (355), Latvia (356) and Croatia (374) were next, data released on July 24 by the European Statistics Office (Eurostat) shows.

However, due to insufficient data, the figures for Romania refer to 2015.

Furthermore, the figure provided by Eurostat results in a total number of passenger cars of under 5 million units at the end of 2015 -- versus 5.15 million reported by the Romanian Government.

The number of passenger cars in Romania hit 6 million by the end of 2017 (6.45 million one year later), or 316 per 1,000 inhabitants according to the Romanian Government. This does not push Romania higher in the ranking but brings it closer to Hungary (355 cars per 1,000 inhabitants).

In contrast, the highest passenger car ownership rates were registered in 2017 in Luxembourg (670 per thousand inhabitants), Italy (625), Finland (617), Malta (613), and Cyprus (609), Eurostat reported. In 2017, Germany reported the largest number of cars (46 million), followed by Italy (37 million), and France (32 million).

(Photo: Pixabay)