Greece records the second highest share of daily cigarette smokers within the EU for 2019 according to the latest Eurostat data, at 23.6% with Bulgaria in first place at 28.7%.
Following Greece are Latvia (22.1%), Germany (21.9%) and Croatia (21.8%).
In contrast, the countries with the smallest shares of daily smokers were Sweden (6.4%), Finland (9.9%), Luxembourg (10.5%), Portugal (11.5%) and Denmark (11.7%).
In 2019, 18.4% of the EU population aged 15 years or more reported that they were daily cigarette smokers. In fact, 12.6% of the EU population consumed fewer than 20 cigarettes per day, while 5.9% consumed 20 or more cigarettes on a daily basis.
The proportion of smokers who consumed 20 cigarettes or more per day ranged between 1.0% in Sweden and 12.9% in Bulgaria. At the same time, the share of smokers who consumed fewer than 20 cigarettes varied between 5.3% in Sweden and 15.8% in Bulgaria.
In 2019, there were more smokers among the male population than the female population: 22.3% of men aged 15 years old and over were daily cigarette smokers, compared with 14.8% of women.
At country level, the proportion of men who smoked daily ranged from a low of 5.9% in Sweden to a high of 37.6% in Bulgaria. For women, this ranged between 6.8% in Sweden and 20.7% in Bulgaria. In all EU Member States, the proportion of daily cigarette smokers was higher among men than among women, apart from in Sweden and Denmark.
In Sweden, the share of men who smoked daily was 0.9 percentage points (pp) less than the share of daily female smokers, while in Denmark the proportion of male smokers who smoked daily was 0.1 pp less than the share of daily female smokers.
[Eurostat]