Luxembourg trails Italy in EU car ownership

According to figures released Friday by Eurostat, Luxembourg continues its strong attachment to automobiles, recording the second-highest car-to-population ratio in the European Union in 2024.

Only Italy, with 701 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 2024, had a higher rate of car ownership than Luxembourg, which had 670, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

Luxembourg’s share was much higher than the EU average, of 578 cars per 1,000 residents, while car ownership in the Grand Duchy was almost 50% above the rate seen in the lowest-ranked country of Latvia, at 424.

However, signs of decreasing vehicle usage were also evident in the data, with Luxembourg having been in the top spot until 2021, before being overtaken by Italy the following year.

Luxembourg’s ratio may not be fully representative, as it includes cross-border commuters driving company-leased vehicles registered in the Grand Duchy.
There was also a sharp drop in freight transport in Luxembourg over the past decade, according to the vehicle-kilometre metric – multiplying the number of vehicles by the average length of trips in kilometres.

Using this measurement, the distance travelled by freight transport vehicles in Luxembourg plummeted by almost 18% from 2014, against the opposite trend across the EU, which saw a 15% increase.

Comparing 2022 and 2023 data, Luxembourg saw one of the biggest declines in fatalities due to road accidents across the EU, down from 56 to 39 deaths per million inhabitants, with a larger drop only registered by Malta.

The data was contained in Eurostat’s annual report on transport trends, entitled the “Key Figures on European Transport: 2025 edition,” which also showed that air passenger travel in Luxembourg is the third-highest in the EU relative to population size.

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli