Of all the things Belgium is known for, few are as celebrated as its alcohol: in particular, its beer. But how much do Belgians actually spend on booze?
Surprisingly perhaps, the answer is not that much. According to a report published on Wednesday by Eurostat, the EU's official statistics office, Belgians spent an average of 1.7% of their household income on alcohol in 2021 – a touch below the EU average of 1.8% and only the 18th highest overall within the bloc.
The same study also found that Latvians spent the greatest proportion of their income on alcoholic beverages (5.0%), followed by Estonia (4.7%) and Poland (3.7%). By contrast, Greece and Italy spent the least (1.0%).
In terms of net expenditure, France spent by far the greatest amount on alcohol at €22 billion — far ahead of second place Poland, which spent €11.7 billion. By contrast, Belgium spent a relatively paltry €3.9 billion.
In total, households in the EU purchased €128 billion worth of alcoholic beverages in 2021, equivalent to almost 1% of the bloc's total GDP.
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Only Croatia registered an increase in average alcohol expenditure from 2020 to 2021 (+0.6 percentage points). Ireland on the other hand recorded the largest decrease in average expenditure (-0.5 percentage points), followed by Latvia and Lithuania (-0.4 percentage points).
Belgium was one of the ten EU countries for which the average alcohol expenditure remained unchanged.
