February 21, 2023
In 2021, for 19.7 % of EU enterprises, the e-commerce sales reached at least 1 % of their total turnover, which was 0.7 percentage points (pp) higher compared with 2020.
Sweden recorded the highest share of enterprises selling online (e-sales of at least 1% of their total turnover) among the EU members with 36.6 %, followed by Denmark (35.6 %) and Ireland (35.2 %). On the other hand, Luxembourg (8.6 %), Romania (10.5 %) and Bulgaria (11.5 %) recorded the lowest shares of enterprises selling online.
The highest increases in EU enterprises reporting that their e-commerce sales reached at least 1 % of their total turnover in 2021 (compared with 2020) were recorded in Finland (27.7 %; +4.2 pp), Spain (29.5 %; +3.7 pp) and Malta (30.0 %; +3.3 pp). In contrast, decreases in enterprises selling online (e-sales of at least 1% of their total turnover) were recorded in Denmark (35.6%; -2.7 pp), Greece and Belgium (17.0 % and 28.3 %, respectively; both -2.3 pp). 19.4 % of all EU enterprises reported conducting online sales using websites or apps (web sales) in 2021, either to private consumers (15.6 % of EU enterprises) or to businesses and governments (13.1 %). A small share of EU enterprises used electronic-data-interchange-type sales in order to sell mainly to their business customers (6.0 %). Enterprises performed their web sales through the enterprises’ own website or app (16.6 %) or through an e-commerce marketplace (8.6 %).
Based on the location of the customers, it was most common for enterprises to conduct web sales to customers in their own country (18.5 % of EU enterprises), with less frequent web sales to customers in other EU countries (8.1 %) and the rest of the world (4.6 %).
For more information:
- Statistics Explained article on e-commerce statistics
- Thematic section on digital economy and society
- Database on digital economy and society
Methodological notes:
- France: break in the time series due to the implementation of the statistical unit enterprise.
- Data come from the 2022 Community survey on ICT usage and e-commerce in enterprises and refer to all enterprises with at least 10 employees or self-employed persons (in NACE Rev. 2 sections C to J, L to N and group 95.1). Further methodological information related to the survey can be found here.
- The ICT usage and e-commerce in enterprises survey collects data about different ICT topics with different reference periods. For the topic of e-commerce, the reference period is the calendar year (2021) prior to the survey year (2022). For the ICT usage and e-commerce in enterprises survey, data in Eurostat’s database are organised according to the survey year and the results above can be found under year 2022.