European commercial vehicle market shrinks for 6th consecutive month

The EU commercial vehicle market continued shrinking for the sixth month in a row in December, a sectoral group announced Tuesday.

New passenger car registrations across the 27-member bloc reached 795,295 units in December, down 22.8% from the same month last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA).


Most of the region’s markets saw double-digit drops, including the four major ones such as Italy (27.5%), Germany (26.9%), Spain (18.7%), and France (15.1%).

Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, and Slovenia are the only EU car markets that expanded last month.

Overall in 2021, sales of new cars in the EU fell by 2.4% to 9.7 million units, despite the record low base of comparison of 2020.

"This fall was the result of the semiconductor shortage that negatively impacted car production throughout the year, but especially during the second half of 2021. Indeed, last year total EU car registrations were still 3.3 million units below pre-crisis sales in 2019," the report said.

Looking at the full year for the four major EU markets, only Germany posted a decline (10.1%) in 2021. By contrast, Italy saw the highest increase (5.5%), followed by Spain (1.0%) and France (0.5%) with modest growth.