Maritime

Key figures on Europe - busiest short sea shipping ports

Published

9 months ago

August 28, 2025

Key figures on Europe - 2025 edition, published in July, provides an overview of recent developments in the EU, covering topics from people and society to economy, business, environment and natural resources. Now, we focus on the transport sector, highlighting the busiest short sea shipping ports in the EU. Short sea shipping is the maritime transport of goods over relatively short distances, namely between ports in the EU (sometimes candidate countries and EFTA countries), and ports situated in geographical Europe, on the Mediterranean and Black Sea.

In 2023, the total weight of goods transported to/from main ports in the EU by short sea shipping was 1.6 billion tonnes; this was equivalent to a decrease of 5.4% when compared with 2022. Rotterdam in the Netherlands was by far the busiest EU port in terms of goods transported (159 million tonnes; 9.9% of the EU total). The second busiest port was the port of Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium (119 million tonnes), which was almost twice as busy as the next port, Gdańsk in Poland (61 million tonnes).

Click to enlarge

Source dataset: mar_sg_am_pw

The Key figures on Europe publication offers essential data on the EU and allows you to compare developments across EU members and EFTA countries. For a more detailed view of the EU’s performance in various fields, explore other Key figures publications as well.