site.btaBulgaria Logs EU's Third Smallest Number of Port Calls in 2023

In 2023, Bulgaria had the third lowest number of port calls (2,851 vessels) in the EU after Slovenia (1,760 vessels) and Cyprus (2,090 vessels), Eurostat said on Tuesday. At the other end of the scale, Greece had the highest number of port calls with 477,115 vessels, followed by Italy (449,131 vessels) and Denmark (322,230 vessels).

In 2023, the number of vessels handling freight or embarking and disembarking passengers in the main EU ports was estimated to be 2.2 million, an increase of 1.5% from the previous year. 

Compared with 2013, 12 out of the 22 reporting EU countries registered increases in the number of vessels calling at ports, Eurostat said. The largest increases were observed in Malta (+100.8%), Croatia (+40.3%) and Spain (+31.0%). By contrast, the biggest decline was reported in Finland (-26.6%), Latvia (-24.3%) and Bulgaria (-21.2%). 

Compared with 2022, Italy registered the biggest increase in average vessel size calling at ports (+25.6%) ahead of Bulgaria (+15.4%) and Romania (14.6%), whereas Malta (-6.1%), Denmark (-3.8%) and Latvia (-1.6%) saw the biggest fall. Overall, 19 EU countries recorded increases in the average size of vessels compared with 2022. This number reaches 20 countries when comparing with 2013.