Decrease in road freight transport in 2023

In 2023,1 857 billion tonne-kilometres were performed in road freight transport in the EU, a 3.2% drop compared with 2022 (1 919 billion tonne-kilometres).

Following some instability in the first and second quarters of 2020 due to COVID-related restrictions, road freight transport increased in 2021 and remained relatively stable in 2022. In 2023, road freight transport recorded decreases in all quarters (-2.3% in the first quarter compared with the same quarter of 2022, -3.6% in the second quarter, -3.8% in the third quarter and -3.1% in the last quarter), with the last 2 quarters dropping to 2019 levels.

Source dataset: road_go_tq_tott and computed data

When comparing 2023 with 2022, the biggest tonne-kilometre decreases in freight transport were recorded in Portugal (-16.4%), Slovakia (-16.2%) and Sweden (-11.5%), while Lithuania (+17.3%), Denmark (+8.2%) and Cyprus (+7.8%) registered the biggest tonne-kilometre increases.

This information comes from data on road freight transport published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on road freight transport statistics.

Germany played central role in intra-EU flows

When examining the top intra-EU freight transport flows, the highest volume of goods was transported between Germany and the Netherlands, a total of 83.3 million tonnes. The freight flow between Germany and Poland amounted to 69.2 million tonnes, and the flow between Belgium and France reached 53.8 million tonnes.

Germany and France dominated the top 15 flows. Germany was involved as either the origin or the destination country in more than half of the top country-to-country flows (8 out of 15) and France was present in a third of the top 15 flows (5 out of 15).

Source dataset: road_go_ta_tott, road_go_ia_ugtt, road_go_ia_lgtt, road_go_cta_gtt and computed data