Portugal is the fifth country in the European Union where there are the most people struggling to heat their homes properly. The data come from the Eurostat study for the year 2018, which concludes that around one fifth of the Portuguese (19.4%) did not have the financial capacity to meet heating costs during the most difficult months. cold. Lisbob, the expatriate assistant in Portugal, offers you the translation of this article published on sol.sapo.pt.
Energy poverty : 20 % of Portuguese people doesn't have money to heat correctly during winter
According to the European Statistical Office report, only countries like Bulgaria (34%), Lithuania (28%), Greece (23%) and Cyprus (22%) are more affected than Portugal by this problem, still far from the European Union average of 7.3%. In the same geographic area - although in this case not included in the 28 EU Member States - North Macedonia (24.9%) also faces a similar scenario.
Despite this, the 2018 data confirm a “positive” development of this indicator in Portugal since the period when the economic and financial crisis weighed most on the Portuguese portfolio. The figures for 2016 and 2017 were 22.5% and 20.4% respectively of Portuguese not being able to pay efficiently for the heating of their accommodation.
Portugal's position in this table is far from ideal, however. Compared to the other countries included in the study, the fifth position in the European Union (and sixth European) is only minimized by the geographic position of the country, since winter temperatures are cool in Portugal.
Nevertheless, neighboring countries such as France, Spain and Italy with very similar climates over a significant part of their territories obtain better results: 5% in France, 9.1% in Spain and 14.1% in Italy. In neighboring Spain, however, this quality of life indicator has declined by 2018, with an increase in the number of citizens experiencing the cold by 8% in 2017.
Portugal is the 5th european country with the most people having issues to heat correctly their house
However, there is currently an overall positive development trend for this factor within the European area. If we consider the EU average of 28, there is a significant drop in the number of citizens facing heating problems. In 2012, there was a “peak”, with 10.8% of citizens in this situation. Since then, in addition to a more favorable recovery in economic activity, the declines have been faster, particularly from 2016 (when the figures were set at 8.7%). The 7.8% figures for 2017 and 7.3% in 2018 only confirmed this trend.
In the longer term, Portugal has also improved considerably in this respect. At the start of the last decade, in 2010, 30.1% of Portuguese people said they couldn't afford to heat their homes. With the exception of all the aforementioned years, between 2012 and 2014, the evolution of this indicator has always been felt, completely changing the national panorama. Although the 19.4% recorded last year still highlights the financial difficulties encountered by many Portuguese families, the truth is that in just ten years the number of Portuguese included in this ranking has decreased by more than a third .
At the bottom of this table, which in this case means the most positive results, are not surprisingly the countries of central and northern Europe, where winter temperatures are more severe. Switzerland (0.6%), Norway (0.9%), Austria (1.6%), Finland (1.7%), Luxembourg (2.1%), Sweden (2.3%), Estonia ( 2.3%) and Denmark (3%) are at the top of this Eurostat table
