How often do you get together with friends and relatives? This was the question asked to adults (aged 16 or over) in the European Union (EU) in a 2015 survey.
More than a third (35%) of people in the EU reported getting together with relatives every week. Cyprus (45%), Slovakia and Greece (both 36%) as well as Malta (35%) had the largest share of people saying that they were in daily contact with relatives.
Conversely, relatives met least often in the Baltic States. At 25%, Latvia recorded the highest share of people who either never got together with relatives in the last 12 months, or only did so less than once a month. Latvia was followed by Estonia (23%) and Lithuania (22%). On average, 15% of people in the EU reported that they met with relatives less often than once a month or did not meet them at all in 2015.
The source dataset can be found here.
More people met with their friends, with 38% of adults in the EU reporting that they got together with friends every week. However, one in ten Europeans (11%) met their friends less often than once a month or did not meet them at all in the previous 12 months.
Southern Member States tended to have the highest proportions of people who saw their friends on daily or weekly basis: Greece (80%) and Cyprus (79%), followed by Croatia (72%), Portugal (70%) and Spain (69%).
In contrast, about 1 in 5 people in Malta (22%), Poland and Lithuania (both 20%) met friends less often than once a month or not at all in the last 12 months.