Across the EU Member States, the countries with the largest shares of daily cigarette smokers were Bulgaria (28.7%), Greece (23.6%), Latvia (22.1%), Germany (21.9%) and Croatia (21.8%). In contrast, the countries with the smallest shares of daily smokers were Sweden (6.4%), Finland (9.9%), Luxembourg (10.5%), Portugal (11.5%) and Denmark (11.7%).
The proportion of smokers who consumed 20 cigarettes or more per day ranged between 1.0% in Sweden and 12.9% in Bulgaria. At the same time, the share of smokers who consumed fewer than 20 cigarettes varied between 5.3% in Sweden and 15.8% in Bulgaria. For Latvia the figure was 7.2%.
As well as the third-highest proportion of total smokers in the population, Latvia has the second-highest proportion of male smokers. Women smoke much less often.
In 2019, there were more smokers among the male population than the female population: 22.3% of men aged 15 years old and over were daily cigarette smokers, compared with 14.8% of women.
At country level, the proportion of men who smoked daily ranged from a low of 5.9% in Sweden to a high of 37.6% in Bulgaria. For women, this ranged between 6.8% in Sweden and 20.7% in Bulgaria. In all EU Member States, the proportion of daily cigarette smokers was higher among men than among women, apart from in Sweden and Denmark. In Sweden, the share of men who smoked daily was 0.9 percentage points (pp) less than the share of daily female smokers, while in Denmark the proportion of male smokers who smoked daily was 0.1 pp less than the share of daily female smokers.
