Binge drinking not a Cyprus thing

Cyprus is bottom of the pile in the EU27 when it comes to binge drinking socially, but monthly consumption is among the highest, according to Eurostat.

Binge drinking or heavy episodic drinking is defined as ingesting the equivalent of more than 60g of pure ethanol on a single occasion.

Among the EU Member States, between 4% (Cyprus and Italy), 6% (Greece, Spain) and 38% (Denmark), Romania (35%) and  Luxembourg (34%) of adults reported taking part in a heavy drinking session at least once a month.

A smaller proportion engaged in the behaviour at least once a week.

In 2019, 8.4% of the EU adult population consumed alcohol daily, 28.8% weekly, 22.8% monthly, and 26.2% never consumed or hadn’t consumed any in the last 12 months.

Daily alcohol intake was the most frequent in Portugal, with a fifth (20.7%) of the population consuming alcohol every day, followed by Spain (13%) and Italy (12.1%).

In contrast, the lowest share was around 1% in Latvia and Lithuania.

In the Netherlands, almost half of the population (47.3%) consumed alcohol every week, closely followed by Luxembourg (43.1%) and Belgium (40.8%).

Monthly consumption in the EU was the highest in Lithuania with 31.3%, Latvia (31.1%) and Cyprus (30.4%).

Croatia reported the highest share of the population (38.3%) who never consumed alcohol or had not consumed any in the last 12 months.

Women accounted for a significantly higher share of individuals that never consumed alcohol or had not consumed any in the last 12 months.

The largest gender gap was found in Cyprus (12.8% men vs. 44.2% women), Bulgaria (16.2% vs. 42.0%) and Italy (21.5% vs. 46.7%).