More than 100 million EU citizens have never surfed web
Baku, December 15 (AZERTAC). Almost a quarter of the European Union`s 500 million people have never used the Internet and there is a widening division between the web-savvy north of Europe and the poorer south and east, figures released on Wednesday showed.
More than half the population of Romania and just under half of those in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal do not have Internet access at home, according to the figures from Eurostat, the EU`s statistical agency.
As well as highlighting geographic disparities across one of the world`s most-developed regions, the figures underline the lack of opportunity people in poorer communities have to take part in advances such as the Internet that have delivered lower cost goods and service to millions of people.
"For many people today it seems difficult to live without the Internet," Eurostat said. "However, a decreasing, but still non-negligible, part of the EU population has never used it," it added, reporting that 24 percent of 16-74 year olds across the 27 countries in the European Union have never accessed the Internet.
Although overall Internet access has risen in the past five years, the range is still wide, with just 45 percent of the population connected in Bulgaria compared with 94 percent in the Netherlands. Others in the top tier include Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark, all with access rates of 90 percent or above. At the bottom end of the scale, 54 percent of those in Romania have never used the Internet, whether via home access, at an Internet cafe or over a smart phone.
Britain, the EU`s third largest economy after Germany and France, has become the dominant force in online commerce and government services, with more than 80 percent of 16-74 year olds making Internet purchases in the past year.
Perhaps one of the survey`s more surprising results was that Spain, a modern economy at the heart of Europe, has a relatively modest rate of Internet access and e-commerce use: just 64 percent of households are connected and only 39 percent of people shop online, the figures showed.
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