Cypriots buy fewer goods online than their European counterparts but use internet banking and social media much more.
Some 54% of the Cyprus population and 67% of the EU (16-74 years old) ordered goods or services over the internet last year, according to Eurostat data.
According to the data, a higher 65% in Cyprus, against 58% of the EU population, used the internet for banking, while 79% of Cypriots, compared to 57% in Europe, participated in social networks.
For those who bought or ordered goods or services online in the year before the 2021 survey across the EU, the share peaked at 93% in three Dutch regions (Drenthe, Utrecht, and Zeeland).
More generally, there was a very high tendency to use e-commerce in all but one of the remaining Dutch regions (Limburg being the exception), all the Danish regions, all but two of the Swedish regions, two out of three Irish regions and Corse (France).
The Bulgarian regions of Yugoiztochen and Severen Tsentralen had the lowest proportions of people using the internet to purchase goods or services online (26% and 27%, respectively).
At least 90% of people across the EU used internet banking in every region of Denmark, Finland, and 8 out of 12 regions in the Netherlands.
The Finnish capital region of Helsinki-Uusimaa had the highest share of internet banking (96%).
Every region of Bulgaria and Romania (except for the capital regions of Yugozapaden and Bucureşti-Ilfov) reported less than one-quarter of all people using internet banking; this was also the case for central Greece.
Finally, 79% in Cyprus and 57% in the EU used the internet to participate in social networks (such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter).
The participation rate for those aged 16–29 (83%) was almost four times as high as that for older people aged 65–74 (23%).
The 21 regions where less than 45% of people participated in social networks were exclusively located in Germany and France.
Several of these were characterised as predominantly rural or outermost regions.
Participation in social networks was particularly low in the eastern German regions of Thüringen, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt (each of these had a share within the range of 34–37%) and in the outermost regions of La Réunion (35%) and Guadeloupe (36%) in France.
