Passenger car: Registrations pick up over summer across EU

Registrations pick up over summer across EU

Brussels, 14/09/2007 – With 1,354,464 new cars registered, July has brought a 7.4% upswing to the European (EU27+EFTA) new passenger car market. In particular, the EU15 improved its result for the first time this year (+6%). The new EU member states remained on a fast growth track (+26.3%). The overall result was positively influenced by one extra working day across the whole region (two in Belgium and France). Although to a lesser extent, new car registrations rose again in August (+2.5%), in spite of the same number of working days as last year. Overall, after first eight months, there were +1% more new cars registered in the EU as compared with 2006. West European growth in July was mostly driven by three of the main markets: France (+21%), Italy (+10.7%) and the UK (+4.9%) while Germany slowed down (–2.7%) and Spain remained on the same level as last year. Apart from Austria (–7%) and Finland (–2.1%), registrations in all other countries rose. Poland (+28.2%), Romania (+46%) and Lithuania (+64%) were among the new members states which performed best. In August new car registrations grew only slightly in the EU15 (+0.5%), mainly due to a decline on almost all the main markets. Solid growth on Italian market (+6.8%) counterbalanced slipping registrations in the UK (–0.4%), Germany (–2.2%), France (–2.4%) and Spain (–2.7%). Among the remaining countries, registrations in the Netherlands (+20.2%) and in Greece (+11.7%) increased most. All the new member states positively contributed to their overall result (+14.2%).

Cumulative figures for the first eight months of 2007 showed an upward trend in the European new car registrations (+1%) although the situation country by country was mixed. While Italian (+7.3%) and British (+2.2%) markets expanded, French market remained flat and Germany (–7.6%) and Spain (–1.5%) suffered losses. The majority of the new member states managed to boost their new car registrations, with substantial increases on the two biggest markets in the region: Poland (+24.6%) and Romania (+29.2%).