(29 November 2016) – In 2015, households in the European Union devoted nearly a quarter of their total consumption expenditure to “housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels”.
This represents a total spending of almost €2 000 bn (equivalent to 13.4% of EU GDP) and is by far the most significant expenditure of EU households. Similar trends can be observed in an overwhelming majority of the EU Member States, albeit to different extents.
In 2015, households devoted the largest share of their total expenditure to housing in Denmark (29.4%) and Finland (28.2%), followed by France (26.4%), Sweden (26.0%), the Czech Republic (25.9%) and the United Kingdom (25.6%).
At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest proportion of household expenditure spent on housing was registered by far in Malta (10.1%), ahead of Lithuania (15.8%), Cyprus (16.6%), Estonia (18.0%), Bulgaria (in 2014), Portugal and Slovenia (all 18.8%) as well as Hungary (19.1%).