Population distribution by municipality size in the EU-27

Data from December 2021 to January 2022. In some Member States, large metropolitan areas are administratively divided into multiple smaller municipalities (LAU2 level). Residents of major urban areas may be statistically recorded as living in municipalities of under 20,000 or 75,000 inhabitants, even though they are functionally part of a large city. This explains why certain countries appear to have little or no population in the ‘>300,000’ category. However, 94% of municipalities indicated as having under 20,000 inhabitants are categorised as towns, suburbs or rural areas based on DEGURBA's degree of urbanisation typology (see Box 1 for more information).