What are the busiest short sea ports in the EU?

The Key figures on Europe - 2025 report published in July, mentions 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).

Read the full key Figures on Europe report here