One-year business survival rates Europe 2018, by country

Almost one in five new businesses in the European Union failed in their first year according to the one-year business survival rates in the European Union for 2018. In this year, the country with the highest business survival rate was Greece, which had a one-year survival rate of 96.7 percent, while Lithuania had the lowest at 63.57.

One-year business survival rates in selected European countries in 2018, by country

Characteristic	Business survival rate
Greece	96.86%
Sweden	96.78%
Netherlands	95.62%
Belgium	91.88%
Luxembourg	89.62%
Croatia	89.5%
United Kingdom	89.18%
North Macedonia	89.05%
Cyprus*	88.69%
Finland	86.55%
Ireland	86.42%
Austria	86.38%
Malta	86.08%
Slovenia	85.87%
Romania	85.23%
Czechia	84.64%
Slovakia	84.22%
Hungary	83.54%
France	83.25%
Switzerland	82.04%
Norway	81.98%
Italy	81.21%
European Union (EU28)	80.67%
Bulgaria	80.56%
Turkey	80.19%
Iceland	76.3%
Estonia	76.27%
Spain	75.59%
Latvia	74.96%
Germany	74.86%
Poland	74.56%
Denmark	72.72%
Portugal	71.32%
Lithuania	63.57%

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Release date

April 2021

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Region

Europe, EU

Survey time period

2018

Supplementary notes

* Data for Cyprus is from 2014

In the Business Demography context, survival occurs if an enterprise is active in terms of employment and/or turnover in the year of birth and the following year(s). Two types of survival can be distinguished:

1. An enterprise born in year xx is considered to have survived in year xx+1 if it is active in terms of turnover and/or employment in any part of year xx+1 (= survival without changes).

2. An enterprise is also considered to have survived if the linked legal unit(s) have ceased to be active, but their activity has been taken over by a new legal unit set up specifically to take over the factors of production of that enterprise (= survival by take-over).

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