July 19, 2023 – Out of one hundred Croats, 42 could not afford to go on a week-long vacation at the beach in Croatia. Or anywhere else, really. According to this criterion, in the EU, only Romania, Bulgaria and Greece did worse.
As Index / Vecernji write, the latest data from the statistical office of the European Union, Eurostat, show that 7.6 percent of Luxembourgers and 10.2 percent of Swedes could not afford a week’s vacation. Following Luxembourg and Sweden, the top spots were taken by Finland, the Netherlands, and Denmark, where 12 percent of citizens cannot afford one week off per year.
At the bottom of this ranking are Romanians, 62.5 percent of whom can only dream of going on a seven-day annual vacation. Bulgaria and Greece followed, where 48.8 and 43.8 percent of citizens cannot afford to go away for a week.
41 percent of Hungarians, 34.2 percent of Italians, 33.8 percent of Slovaks, 27.6 percent of Poles, 18 percent of Czechs, 16.7 percent of Slovenians, and 13.8 percent of Austrians cannot afford one week of travel per year.
Croats Way Down, EU Average 28 Percent
Eurostat published this data at the request of the left-wing faction in the German Bundestag. According to their own statements, 21.9 percent of people in Germany did not have enough money for a one-week vacation in 2022. According to these data, single parents are the most affected. In the “single person with dependent children” category, 42 percent of them in Germany cannot afford a week-long vacation. All in all, households with children are more often affected (23.4 percent) than households without children (20.7 percent). Pensioners are also affected. 40,000 people were interviewed for the German dataset.
Dietmar Bartsch, the left-wing leader of the Bundestag, called the data for Germany a “sad finding.” “Everyone should have the opportunity to take at least one week’s vacation a year. This requires higher wages, adequate pensions, a consistent anti-inflation policy, and a basic poverty-proof child safety system in Germany,” Bartsch said.
