Shoppers in Eight EU Countries Buy Less Than They Did Four Years Ago

What a volume index measures

Retail turnover can rise while people buy less, if prices rise faster than sales. The volume index removes that: it is adjusted for price changes, so it tracks the quantity of goods sold rather than the money spent on them.

Against a 2021 base of 100, EU retail volumes in 2025 stood at 103.4. Four years of growth totalling 3.4%.

The countries that went backwards

Eight Member States are below 100. Finland records 91.9, Estonia 92.9, Belgium 93.2, Sweden 96.5, Austria 97.1, Denmark 97.2, Italy 97.6 and Czechia 99.3.

In each of those countries, households bought less at retail in 2025 than they did in 2021. Finland and Estonia are roughly 8% below where they started.

The grouping is not poor. Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Belgium are among the Union's higher-income Member States, and all four are below their 2021 level. Nor is it one region: Italy is in the eight and Czechia is too. This is not a ranking of prosperity, and it is not a map.

The countries that grew

Luxembourg records 137.3, Cyprus 124.5 and Malta 123.9, all small economies where retail figures can move sharply for reasons that have little to do with domestic households — cross-border shopping in Luxembourg's case.

Bulgaria at 120.9, Croatia at 116.6, Romania at 115.8 and Portugal at 115.2 are the substantial cases. All four are large enough that the growth reflects domestic consumption, and all four are among the Union's lower-income Member States.

Germany, and what the EU figure hides

Germany records 100.6. Over four years, German retail volumes are essentially unchanged.

Because Germany is the Union's largest retail market, that flat line pulls the EU aggregate down, and 103.4 describes no country in particular rather than a common experience. The spread runs from 91.9 to 137.3 and it does not fall along a geographical line: Portugal at 115.2 and Spain at 111.2 grew strongly while Italy at 97.6 and Greece at 100.3 did not, and Bulgaria at 120.9 and Poland at 110.3 grew strongly while Estonia at 92.9 and Czechia at 99.3 did not. Neither the south nor the east moved as a bloc.

The period this covers ran through the energy price shock of 2022 and the inflation that followed it. A volume index strips the price effect out of the measurement, but not out of the behaviour — households facing higher energy and housing costs have less left for everything else, and this is what that looks like four years on.