After the long holidays, most people are known to cut back on their alcohol consumption in January. They give up wine, spirits, or beer – which is not only good for their bodies, but also for their wallets. One evening, one drink planned, and before you know it, you’re on your third. We often don’t check our bank balance until the next morning – and it’s not uncommon to get a bit of a shock. However, there is some positive news: as current data from the Federal Statistical Office on “Dry January” shows, Germany is one of the countries with the cheapest alcohol prices among European countries. Prices here are around 14 percent below the EU average. Only in Italy is alcohol even cheaper – there it is 19 percent below the EU average.
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Finland, on the other hand, is not such a cheap place to go out. Consumers there have to pay twice the EU average price. Denmark ranks second with 123 percent of the average price, followed by Belgium with 113 percent.
So while alcohol prices in Germany are comparatively low, alcohol consumption in this country is still relatively high. According to older figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), every citizen aged 15 and over consumed an average of 11.2 liters of pure alcohol in 2022. This corresponds to around 448 half-liter glasses of beer, which is significantly more than one beer per day. It should be noted that ten years earlier, the figure was around one liter higher. In the ranking of alcohol consumption, Germany ranks ninth alongside France and Portugal. Higher values were recorded in Romania with 17.1 liters of pure alcohol, Latvia with 14.7 liters, and Czechia with 13.7 liters, among others. In countries with particularly high prices, such as Finland and Denmark, per capita consumption was 9.5 and 10.0 liters of pure alcohol, respectively.
According to research, even in small quantities, alcohol is a cell toxin that can only be avoided by abstaining completely. Addiction researchers have observed a long-term decline in per capita consumption in Germany, but it remains at a high level. ” Men in particular are drinking less today than they used to – women, on the other hand, not necessarily,” explains Carolin Kilian from the Center for Interdisciplinary Addiction Research (ZIS) at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.