In 2024, EU ports recorded 417.8 million passengers, as the sector continued to show signs of recovery after the COVID-affected slump.

Passenger numbers were 24.3 million higher than in 2023 (+6.2%), the overall traffic approaching the 2019 levels (-0.1%).

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 14 million passengers, accounted for 94.1% of all seaborne passenger transport in the EU.

Italian ports recorded 93.5 million passengers, or 22.4% of the EU total, followed closely by Greece with 81.1 million passengers (19.4%). Denmark came in third with 41.3 million passengers (9.9%).

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 21.8% of the EU’s seaborne passengers. These included 7 ports in the Mediterranean, 2 in the Baltic and 1 in the North-East Atlantic.

The 3 busiest EU passenger ports were all in Italy: Messina came first with 11.4 million passengers, followed by Reggio di Calabria (11.2 million passengers) and Napoli (11.0 million).

Compared with 2019, Napoli recorded the biggest increase in the number of passengers (+1.7 million; +18.5%) while Helsinki recorded the largest decrease (-2.3 million; -19.7%).