Brussels, 20/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - New passenger car registrations in Europe fell by 12.3% in April, for the twelfth consecutive month, according to figures published on Thursday 14 May by ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers' Association).
In total, 1,221,096 new cars were registered in 25 EU member states (data for Cyprus and Malta not being available) or 1,221,862 if one adds data for EFTA (Iceland, Norway, Switzerland), which represents a fall of 12.3% compared to April 2008. The decline in sales over the first four months of the year was 15.9%, reaching 27% in January, 18.3% in February and 9% in March despite national recovery plans to stimulate sales. New car registrations fell by 11.6% in April in the EU15 states. Austria (+12.8%) and Germany (+19.4%) were the only countries to benefit, in April, from the boost given by the scrapping premium. Sales in France (-7.1%) and Italy (-7.5%) declined moderately, while in the United Kingdom and Spain the decline was 24% and 45.6% respectively. Strong falls were also recorded in April in Sweden (-33.6%), the Netherlands (-27.9%), Portugal (-33.9%), Finland (-52.1%) and Ireland (-66.7%). The situation in the ten new member states was more diversified but the decline in new car registrations in April (-21.4%) was almost twice as high as in EU15 countries. Poland (+2.4%), the Czech Republic (+19%) and Slovakia (43.5%) did experience growth, however, with 28.7 million, 17.5 million and 9.7 million new registrations respectively. There was considerable market contraction in Hungary and Romania, on the other hand (-51.5 and -51.8%). The trend was the same at the beginning of the year, with the three Visegrad countries (except Hungary) notching up a slight rise in sales from January to April compared to the four months of 2008 (+0.3% in Slovakia, 1.6% in Poland and 1.8% in the Czech Republic). (A.By./transl.jl)