Top 10 European countries with best performance in e-commerce in 2020

Greece, strange as it sounds, recorded in 2020 the highest growth rates in terms of turnover of e-commerce with other major European countries to follow. In particular, Greece reached + 77% according to the European E-Commerce Report for 2021 compiled by E-commerce Europe and EuroCommerce. In the second place after Greece follows Moldova, with a growth rate of + 49%, while Russia holds the third position with + 41%. In the fourth place is Switzerland with + 37%, while the top five countries with the highest growth rate in terms of turnover of e-commerce is completed by North Macedonia with a percentage also + 37%.

Continuing the presentation of the list, in the 6th place is Sweden with a growth rate in terms of turnover of e-commerce + 36%. Sweden is followed by Hungary in the 7th place with + 35%, while in the 8th place is Poland with + 34%. The last two positions of the list are completed by Albania with a growth rate in terms of turnover of e-commerce + 33% and Croatia with + 32%.

The list includes several more European countries, which, however, failed to record a high growth rate in 2020 in terms of e-commerce turnover. For example, the percentage of Spain is + 29% while of Cyprus + 25%. Portugal (+ 23%), Finland (+ 22%) and Luxembourg (+ 21%) recorded an even slower growth rate. Single-digit growth was recorded in Bulgaria (9%), France (9%), Belgium (7%), Ireland (7%), Austria (7%), Denmark (6%), Italy (3 %), the Netherlands (3%), the United Kingdom (2%) and Germany (2%).

The country with a negative growth rate in 2020 in terms of e-commerce turnover is Norway, with a share of -31%.

In terms of measuring the share of e-commerce turnover in the GDP of a country, the first place in this list is occupied by the United Kingdom with 9.9%. In the second place is Denmark with 7.29%, followed by Estonia with 6.78%. Greece is in the 4th place, behind the United Kingdom, Denmark and Estonia. The percentage of Greece is 6.65%.

Greece is followed by the Czech Republic in the 5th place, with a percentage of 5.71%. Spain is also high in terms of share of the e-commerce turnover in relation to the country’s GDP with a percentage of 5.63%, while in the 7th place follows France with a percentage of 4.79%. Poland, Portugal and Romania complete the top ten countries with the highest share of e-commerce turnover in GDP. More specifically, the percentage of Poland (8^th place of the list) is 4.67%, Portugal (9^th place of the list) is 3.90% and Romania (10^th place of the list) is 3.51%.

Smaller percentages are recorded in countries such as Germany (3.08%), Norway (2.57%), Sweden (2.42%), Austria (2.30%), Italy (1.99%) and Switzerland (1.88%). At the same time, the percentages of Luxembourg (0.94%), Moldova (0.88%) and Malta (0.79%) are much lower.

It is worth mentioning that while the percentage of e-consumers across Europe is estimated at 73% of the population, in the Mediterranean countries this percentage is much lower with only Malta exceeding 70%.