Last year, 78 percent of internet users in the European Union made at least one online purchase. Ireland ranks highest, with more than 95 percent. In Romania, the number of online shoppers has grown the most over the past ten years.
This emerges from new figures published by Eurostat. Both the amount of online EU citizens and the number of online shoppers among them increased again in 2025.
Millions of additional buyers
Last year, 94.5 percent of all residents of the European Union used the internet, compared with 93.7 percent in 2024. Of those users, 77.8 percent bought something online, more than one percentage point higher than a year earlier (76.6 percent). The increase may seem small, but the vast majority of Europeans already shop online, which means the growth potential is limited. Still, several million new online buyers were added in the EU last year.
Top three
Ecommerce is most deeply embedded in Ireland, the new figures show: 95.3 percent of the country’s internet users buy online. The Netherlands follows with an adoption rate of 94.4 percent, while Denmark ranks third in the EU, with a share of 91.2 percent. Norway scores even higher, at 93.4 percent, but that country is not a member of the Union.
Online shopping is most established in Ireland
At the bottom of the EU ranking are Romania (63.6 percent), Italy (61.7 percent) and Bulgaria (57.0 percent). According to earlier Eurostat data, Yugoiztochen in southeastern Bulgaria is the EU region with the lowest share of frequent online shoppers: only slightly more than one in five residents orders online regularly. The differences in ecommerce adoption between countries and regions within the Union are large.
Strongest growth
Eurostat also compares adoption in 2025 with that in 2015. The figures show that the number of online shoppers has increased the most in Romania among all EU countries. Ten years ago, only 18 percent of internet users bought online; last year that figure was almost 64 percent (an increase of 46 percentage points).
Ecommerce adoption has grown enormously in Romania
The Czech Republic (plus 33 percentage points) and current leader Ireland (plus 32 percentage points) also recorded strong growth. In North Macedonia, which is not an EU member, ecommerce has also become much more widespread over the past decade. The share of online shoppers there has almost quadrupled, reaching 60.3 percent of internet users.
