Summer Travel Too Costly for Almost One-Third of EU Citizens

Thirty-five million citizens of the European Union just don’t have the financial means to take a week-long trip within Europe, says a recent survey. That’s a total of 28% of EU citizens who can’t afford a one-week holiday away from home, according to recent research from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). That percentage goes all the way up to 59.5% for European citizens whose incomes fall within the at-risk-of-poverty threshold.

The poor citizens of Greece have it the worst. There, 88.9% of the population is at risk of poverty and can’t afford holidays abroad. Poverty risk (thus traveling abroad) isn’t much better in member states like Romania (86.8%), Croatia (84.7%), or Slovakia (76.1%), either.

Meanwhile, massive income gaps in some member states make for disenfranchised would-be holidaymakers. Those EU countries with large gaps between persons with income below 60% of their median and those who have an income above that threshold include the top three: Croatia (43.2 percentage points), Greece (43 percentage points), and Bulgaria (42.4 percentage points), among others.

The most significant increases in such a divide were recorded in places like Romania (+17 percentage points) and Slovakia (+14 percentage points).

“The rise in holiday inequality shows how the benefits of economic growth in Europe over the last decade haven’t been shared fairly,” ETUC deputy general secretary Esther Lynch pointed out.

The European Commission has previously reported that over a fifth of the EU’s 450 million citizens were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2019.

Source: ETUC