One in eight people in the EU cannot afford regular leisure activities
According to Eurostat data for 2025, this affects about 46 million people. The share is highest in Greece at 27.3 percent and lowest in Croatia at 3.9 percent.
Graphic: TERRA WORLD NEWS (own graphic based on the sources listed)
About 46 million people aged 16 and over in the EU cannot afford regular leisure activities, according to Eurostat data for 2025 analysed by euronews. That is 12.1 percent; women are more affected at 13 percent than men at 11.1 percent. Among people below the poverty line the share is 29 percent, more than three times as high as among those above it.
Greece is worst affected at 27.3 percent, followed by Romania (23.3), Lithuania (17.9), Latvia (16.2) and Hungary (15.8). The lowest rates are in Croatia (3.9), Czechia (4.1), Luxembourg (5.4) and Slovakia (5.7). France (13.9) and Spain (13.4) are above the EU average, Germany (11.7) and Italy (10.7) slightly below.
According to the analysis, income explains less than a fifth of the differences between countries. France and Cyprus, for example, have almost identical median incomes, yet the share is 13.9 percent in France and 6.3 percent in Cyprus. A Eurostat working paper also notes that poor people may report that they do not want things simply because they cannot afford them.