Seen from the regions

To find the lowest density of population in the European Union you need to travel in some of the more outlying regions between Sweden and Finland. To encounter the largest number of homes linked to the internet you need to go to the Netherlands. The highest average level of graduates is found, instead, in the region of Brabant Wallonia, in Belgium. These facts, and an overall region-based statistical account of the 27-member EU, are contained in the “Regional Yearbook 2009”, published by Eurostat.From demography and economic indicators to tourism. The Statistical Office of the European Commission (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu) has gathered a huge quantity of data, tables, comparative charts and percentages, which are divided into various chapters and describe the realities of a continent that we don’t always know. It’s a kind of jigsaw puzzle made up of the member states, the three candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia), and the four members of the European Free Trade Association (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), and which is reassembled piece by piece, observing the Old Continent from the viewpoint of the regions and cities. The Yearbook contains regionally-based data on population, gross domestic product, labour market, family budgets, the structure of businesses, education, new technologies, tourism, agriculture and the preservation of the territory. It also includes for the first time a chapter, overdue in the age of the internet and global communication, on the “information society”. has gathered a huge quantity of data, tables, comparative charts and percentages, which are divided into various chapters and describe the realities of a continent that we don’t always know. It’s a kind of jigsaw puzzle made up of the member states, the three candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia), and the four members of the European Free Trade Association (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), and which is reassembled piece by piece, observing the Old Continent from the viewpoint of the regions and cities. The Yearbook contains regionally-based data on population, gross domestic product, labour market, family budgets, the structure of businesses, education, new technologies, tourism, agriculture and the preservation of the territory. It also includes for the first time a chapter, overdue in the age of the internet and global communication, on the “information society”.London and Brussels the most highly populated areas. The EU, which has comprised 27 countries since 2007, has a total population of some half a billion people, with an average density per square kilometre of c. 112 inhabitants. The distribution of population between the individual states is very diverse: we think of the great expanse of reunited Germany and the small – demographically speaking – islands of Malta or Cyprus. But if we proceed to the regional level (271 regions are identified by Eurostat; listed in alphabetical order, they begin with the Abruzzo, in Italy, and end with Zuid-Holland, in the Netherlands), we discover that the most densely populated areas in the EU are Inner London (UK) with 9,354 inhabitants per square km, Brussels (Belgium) with 6,405, Melilla (Spain) with 5,197, Vienna (Austria) with 4,031 and Berlin (Germany) with 3,820. On the contrary, to find regions with few houses and few residents, we need to travel to French Guyana or Ovre Norrland in Sweden, with three inhabitants per square km. The situation is not very different in Pohjois-Suomi (Finland, 4 inhabitants per sq km), Mellersta Norrland (Sweden, 5) or Ita-Suomi (again in Finland, 8). Few residents? Greece, Sweden, Finland… According to the Eurostat Yearbook, “a high population density (500 inhabitants per square kilometre or more) was registered in 32 regions of the EU-27”, comprising various metropolitan areas corresponding to national capitals and other major conurbations. “Eight of these areas are located in the UK, six in Germany, four in Holland, three in Belgium and Spain, and one each in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, France, Austria, Portugal, Romania and Malta”. A population density (which is not only a demographic, but also an economic, social and environmental index) lower than 50 inhabitants per sq km is found in 28 regions: five of them are in Greece and in Sweden, four each in Spain and Finland, three in France, and one apiece in Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, UK, Estonia and Latvia. To take one or two national cases, it emerges that the most populated region in Ireland is Southern and Eastern (86 inhabitants per sq km), the least populated is Border, Midland and Western (35); in Italy, we find Campania (426) and Valle d’Aosta (38) respectively at the top and bottom of the regional league table; in Hungary, it is Kozép-Magyarorszàg (415) and Dél-Dunàntùl (68).Access to internet: Netherlands holds the record. The Yearbook’s statistics on the number of accesses to internet is of particular interest, given that internet is a resource ever more commonly used to assess the development of a country or region. On average, emphasises Eurostat, “60% of families had access to internet in 2008”, albeit with different connection modalities and speeds. But “percentages of homes linked to the web higher than 75% are registered in 35 regions of the EU-27”: they include the twelve Dutch regions, nine regions in the UK, six in Germany, four in Denmark, three in Sweden and Luxembourg. In the Dutch region of Noord-Holland, the percentage of internet access in homes rises to 90%, while in those of Groningen and Utrecht it is of the order of 89%. Quite the opposite situation is found in 38 regions with an average of internet connection lower than 45% of homes; they are mainly located in Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy and Greece.