Portrait of EU coastal regions

In 2007, 196 million people lived, 88 million people worked and 410 million people embarked or disembarked in EU coastal regions

In 2007, 43% of the inhabitants of the 22 EU Member States lived in coastal regions and 38% of coastal region inhabitants resided in one of the 194 cities with over 100, 000 inhabitants located within 50 km of the sea. The service sector is the biggest employer, accounting for 72% of the jobs in these regions. However, involvement in the service sector is not homogeneous all over the regions. High density of tourism capacity or large marine passenger traffic is linked with the level of employment in sectors such as households and enterprise services. Administrative and financial services, for their part, are most often related to the level of urbanisation of these regions. An analysis of these characteristics enabled five main profiles to be drawn of these highly specific regions. The data contained in this publication can be used for the monitoring of coastal regions profiles in the framework of the EU integrated Maritime Policy.