The cheapest food and drinks in Europe

If you still have not decided about where to go on holiday, and sunny Transcarpathia and Ukrainian realities no longer seem that sunny, – here are some of the examples from abroad.

Statistics found out where in the EU the cost of living is the lowest and where food, soft and alcoholic drinks are the cheapest.

In the 27 countries of the European Union, prices for everyday goods, including food and beverages, vary greatly. Somewhere prices are half higher than the European average, elsewhere – half lower. Among large-area countries, Germany is the closest to the average figures: its consumer basket is only by 1.8 percent more expensive than the European in general.

The two poles: Denmark and Bulgaria

Thus, Germany, can be considered a "golden mean" in the EU in terms of prices. Also the consumer basket in Germany is cheaper than that in most of their neighbors, with the exception of Poland and the Czech Republic. This is the conclusion reached in the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden, which on June 24, published the Comparative analysis of the cost of living in the EU. So, according to the results, in Denmark the cost of living is 41.9 per cent higher than the EU average. With these figures Denmark became the country with the highest prices in the EU. It is followed by Sweden (+28 percent) and Finland (+24 percent). The cheapest cost of living is in Bulgaria. The price level there is the lowest, with a whopping -51.1 percent.

Cheapest alcohol in the EU

According to Eurostat, the cheapest food and soft drinks are in Poland. Shopping in supermarket, the meat shop and the bakery there will cost 61 percent of the European average. Relatively low spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages is recorded also in other countries in Eastern Europe – in Romania (67 per cent), Bulgaria (68 percent) and Lithuania (77 percent). And the list of the most expensive EU countries according to these criteria is again headed by Denmark and Sweden (143 and 124 percent of average) and Austria (120 percent).  
  Prices of alcohol in Germany are among the lowest in Europe. The Germans pay for it only 82 percent of the average level in the EU. There are only three EU countries where beer, wine and hard liquor is cheaper: it’s Hungary (79 percent), Romania (75 percent) and Bulgaria (67 percent).

In Finland alcohol drinks are twice more expensive than in Germany, 175 percent of the EU average. The list of countries with a particularly high prices also includes Ireland (162 percent), Sweden (161 percent) and the UK (143 percent). However, the undisputed champion of Europe in this respect is Norway which is not the EU member. There, alcoholic beverages cost as much as 288 percent of the average level on the continent. 

Source – DW.DE