Last year, 17.9% of the population of the European Union (EU) reported suffering from noise from neighbours or the street, according to Eurostat. Unsurprisingly, this proportion is more than twice as high for people living in cities (23.3%) than for those in rural areas (10.4%).

In Cyprus the same rate was slightly more than 15%, equal to Belgium.

Moreover, the proportion of people that reported having experienced problems with noise from their neighbours or the street tends to decrease with the number of persons in the household. While almost 20.8% of single persons claimed to have been disturbed by neighbourhood noise, this affected 17.8% of two-adult households and 16.6% of those made up of three or more adults. Similarly, the share is higher for households without dependent children (18.4%) than for those with dependent children (17.5%).

One in 4 persons suffers from neighbourhood noise in Malta, Germany and the Netherlands.

Across the EU Member States in 2016, about a quarter of the population reported experiencing problems with noise from their neighbours or the street in Malta (26.2%), Germany (25.1%) and the Netherlands (24.9%). They were followed by those living in Portugal (23.1%), Romania (20.3%), Greece (19.9%) and Luxembourg (19.7%).

At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest proportion was recorded in Ireland (7.9%), ahead of Croatia (8.5%), Bulgaria (10.0%) and Estonia (10.4%).