Population in the largest city (% of urban population) in European Union was reported at 16 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. European Union - Population in the largest city - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

In 2025, Moscow was the largest city in Europe with an estimated urban agglomeration of 12.74 million people. The French capital, Paris, was the second largest city in 2025 at 11.35 million, followed by the capitals of the United Kingdom and Spain, with London at 9.84 million and Madrid at 6.81 million people. Istanbul, which would otherwise be the largest city in Europe in 2025, is excluded as it is only partially in Europe, with a sizeable part of its population living in Asia. Europe’s population is almost 750 million Since 1950, the population of Europe has increased by approximately 200 million people, increasing from 550 million to 750 million in these seventy years. Before the turn of the millennium, Europe was the second-most populated continent, before it was overtaken by Africa, which saw its population increase from 228 million in 1950 to 817 million by 2000. Asia has consistently had the largest population of the world’s continents and was estimated to have a population of 4.6 billion. Europe’s largest countries Including its territory in Asia, Russia is by far the largest country in the world, with a territory of around 17 million square kilometers, almost double that of the next largest country, Canada. Within Europe, Russia also has the continent's largest population at 145 million, followed by Germany at 83 million and the United Kingdom at almost 68 million. By contrast, Europe is also home to various micro-states such as San Marino, which has a population of just 30 thousand.

The city of Paris in France had an estimated gross domestic product of 757.6 billion Euros in 2021, the most of any European city. Paris was followed by the spanish capital, Madrid, which had a GDP of 237.5 billion Euros, and the Irish capital, Dublin at 230 billion Euros. Milan, in the prosperous north of Italy, had a GDP of 228.4 billion Euros, 65 billion euros larger than the Italian capital Rome, and was the largest non-capital city in terms of GDP in Europe. The engine of Europe Among European countries, Germany had by far the largest economy, with a gross domestic product of over 4.18 trillion Euros. The United Kingdom or France have been Europe's second largest economy since the 1980s, depending on the year, with forecasts suggesting France will overtake the UK going into the 2020s. Germany however, has been the biggest European economy for some time, with five cities (Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt) among the 15 largest European cities by GDP. Europe's largest cities In 2023, Moscow was the largest european city, with a population of nearly 12.7 million. Paris was the largest city in western Europe, with a population of over 11 million, while London was Europe's third-largest city at 9.6 million inhabitants.

The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) is the largest dedicated international initiative to promote climate action at city level, covering globally over 10,000 cities and in the European Union almost half the population by end of March 2020. The present dataset refers to a harmonised, complete and verified dataset of GHG inventories for 6,200 cities, signatories of the GCoM initiative as of end of 2019, in the: European Union, EFTA countries and UK, Western Balkans, Eastern and Southern EU neighbourhoods countries. The methodology and the general approach for the data collection can be found in Bertoldi et. al. 2018. Guidebook: How to develop a Sustainable Energy Climate Action Plan (SECAP). (2018) doi:10.2760/223399.

It is estimated that the cities of Cordova (modern-day Córdoba) and Palermo were the largest cities in Europe in 1050, and had between fifteen and twenty times the population of most other entries in this graph, Despite this the cities of Cordova (the capital city of the Umayyad caliphate, who controlled much of the Iberian peninsula from the seventh to eleventh centuries), and Palermo (another Arab-controlled capital in Southern Europe) were still the only cities in Western Europe with a population over one hundred thousand people, closely followed by Seville. It is also noteworthy to point out that the five largest cities on this list were importing trading cities, in modern day Spain or Italy, although the largest cities become more northern and western European in later lists (1200, 1330, 1500, 1650 and 1800). In 1050, todays largest Western European cities, London and Paris, had just twenty-five and twenty thousand inhabitants respectively.

The period of European history (and much of world history) between 500 and 1500 is today known as the 'Dark Ages'. Although the term 'Dark Ages' was originally applied to the lack of literature and arts, it has since been applied to the lack or scarcity of recorded information from this time. Because of these limitations, much information about this time is still being debated today.

Intentional homicide offences in largest cities

Link to this report's codebookWe are pleased to launch the 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities (prototype version). This is the first report comparing the performance of capital cities and a selection of large metropolitan areas in the European-Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In total, results for 45 European cities are presented in this first prototype version. The report was prepared by a team of researchers from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Brabant Center for Sustainable Development (Telos, Tilburg University).It builds on SDSN’s experience in designing SDG indicators for nations and metropolitan areas. The report also builds on TELOS’ previous work on “Sustainability Monitoring of European Cities” (2014) prepared in collaboration with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment (Zoeteman et al. 2014) which led to the development of an interactive platform on request of the Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (Zoeteman et al. 2016)1.This report comes at a key opportunity for Europe to increase its focus on the SDGs, with the election of the new European Parliament in May, the new Presidency of the Council of the EU moving to Finland in July, and the arrival of a new European Commission by the end of the year. The European Union can and should strengthen its policy measures to achieve all of the SDGs. In that context, the European Commission’s January 2019 Reflection Paper “Towards a sustainable Europe by 2030” highlights various scenarios to support the SDGs over the next decade. The report by the European Commission highlights the opportunities to address the SDGs as part of the next EU Urban Agenda.Achieving the SDGs will require, at the local level, deep transformations in transportation, energy and urban planning and new approaches to address poverty and inequalities in access to key public services including health and education. The SDSN estimates that about two-thirds (65%) of the 169 SDG targets underlying the 17 SDGs can only be reached with the proper engagement of, and coordination with, local and regional governments (SDSN 2015).Similarly, UN-Habitat estimates that around one-third of all SDGs indicators have a local or urban component2. The Urban Agenda for the European Union launched in May 2016 (Pact of Amsterdam), recognizes the crucial role of cities in achieving the SDGs. Over two-thirds of EU citizens live in urban areas while about 85% of the EU’s GDP is generated in cities (European Commission 2019). The urban population in Europe is projected to rise to just over 80% by 2050 (European Commission 2016).This 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards for European Cities (prototype version) finds that no European capital city or large metropolitan area has of yet fully achieved the SDGs. Nordic European cities – Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen – are closest to the SDG targets but still face challenges in achieving one or several of the SDGs. Overall, the cities in Europe perform best on SDG 3 (Health and Well-Being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). By contrast, performance is lowest on SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).As always, our analysis is constrained by the availability, quality and comparability of data. These data constraints are even greater at the subnational level. Despite the ground breaking work conducted by the European Commission – notably via Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre – to define territorial levels and metropolitan areas and to standardize subnational data and indicators, major gaps remain to monitor all of the SDGs. A table summarizing some of these major gaps is included in this report.The need to expand and strengthen SDG monitoring in regions and municipalities across Europe in the coming years was raised extensively in the consultation made by SDSN as part of its 2019 study on “Exposing EU policy gaps to address the Sustainable Development Goals” prepared in collaboration with the European Economic and Social Committee (Lafortune and Schmidt-Traub 2019) . This was also one of the recom- mendations made by ESAC during the consultation phase for the “2017 Sustainable development in the European Union — Monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context” (European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC) 2017).We hope this first 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities (prototype version) will help to identify the major SDG priorities in urban Europe. All data and analyses included in this report are available on SDSN’s and TELOS’ data portals (www.sdgindex.org and www.telos.nl). Individual city profiles are accessible online. We very much welcome comments and suggestions for filling gaps in the data used for this index and for improving the analysis and presentation of the results. Please contact us at info@sdgindex.org or telos@uvt.nl.Jeffrey Sachs,Director SDSNGeert Duijsters,Dean Tilburg School of economics, Tilburg University - Telos

Intentional homicide victims in largest cities by sex

Russia is the largest country in Europe, and also the largest in the world, its total size amounting to 17 million square kilometers (km2). It should be noted, however, that over three quarters of Russia is located in Asia, and the Ural mountains are often viewed as the meeting point of the two continents in Russia; nonetheless, European Russia is still significantly larger than any other European country. Ukraine, the second largest country on the continent, is only 603,000 km2, making it about 28 times smaller than its eastern neighbor, or seven times smaller than the European part of Russia. France is the third largest country in Europe, but the largest in the European Union. The Vatican City, often referred to as the Holy Sea, is both the smallest country in Europe and in the world, at just one km2. Population Russia is also the most populous country in Europe. It has around 144 million inhabitants across the country; in this case, around three quarters of the population live in the European part, which still gives it the largest population in Europe. Despite having the largest population, Russia is a very sparsely populated country due to its size and the harsh winters. Germany is the second most populous country in Europe, with 83 million inhabitants, while the Vatican has the smallest population. Worldwide, India and China are the most populous countries, with approximately 1.4 billion inhabitants each. Cities Moscow in Russia is ranked as the most populous city in Europe with around 13 million inhabitants, although figures vary, due to differences in the methodologies used by countries and sources. Some statistics include Istanbul in Turkey* as the largest city in Europe with its 15 million inhabitants, bit it has been excluded here as most of the country and parts of the city is located in Asia. Worldwide, Tokyo is the most populous city, with Jakarta the second largest and Delhi the third.

Visit a European Union institutionThe European Union institutions are open to visitors from around the world to learn more about the EU and get an understanding of their work. With sites in several major European cities, the institutions offer a variety of options to visitors. Some institutions provide interactive on-site visitor centres, some allow physical access to their buildings, and some organise tailor-made presentations and discussions involving their staff.Whatever form a visit to an EU institution takes, visitors are guaranteed an interactive and educational experience. Students and tourists alike will see and learn first-hand how the EU works. And have fun, too.

More info: https://european-union.europa.eu/contact-eu/visit-european-union-institution_en

In 2024, Russia had the largest population among European countries at ***** million people. The next largest countries in terms of their population size were Turkey at **** million, Germany at **** million, the United Kingdom at **** million, and France at **** million. Europe is also home to some of the world’s smallest countries, such as the microstates of Liechtenstein and San Marino, with populations of ****** and ****** respectively. Europe’s largest economies Germany was Europe’s largest economy in 2023, with a Gross Domestic Product of around *** trillion Euros, while the UK and France are the second and third largest economies, at *** trillion and *** trillion euros respectively. Prior to the mid-2000s, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, Italy, had an economy that was of a similar sized to France and the UK, before diverging growth patterns saw the UK and France become far larger economies than Italy. Moscow and Istanbul the megacities of Europe Two cities on the eastern borders of Europe were Europe’s largest in 2023. The Turkish city of Istanbul, with a population of 15.8 million, and the Russian capital, Moscow, with a population of 12.7 million. Istanbul is arguably the world’s most famous transcontinental city with territory in both Europe and Asia and has been an important center for commerce and culture for over 2,000 years. Paris was the third largest European city with a population of ** million, with London being the fourth largest at *** million.

The national statistical offices of the countries of the European Union cooperate in the Urban Audit project. The aim of this project is to obtain comparable information for the Member States on the living conditions in the largest cities of the EU countries. In 2009, the European Commission launched the fourth Urban Audit. The first European results of this Urban Audit, which includes 310 variables, will be available in 2011.

The Urban Audit is coordinated by Eurostat. The Netherlands participated for the third time and the Central Bureau of Statistics again coordinated the Dutch data collection.

The largest Western European city in 1200 was Palermo, with 150 thousand inhabitants. This is a great decrease in the number 150 years previously, where the population was 350 thousand. The city of Cordova also decreased by almost 400 thousand in this time, possibly because of the declining Arabian control and influence in the area. Seville is the third largest city on this list, although it's overall population decreased by ten thousand since 1050. The largest cities are generally in Spain or Italy, although the second largest city on this list is Paris, with 110 thousand inhabitants. In the lists that follow, Paris remains at the top as either the largest (1500 and 1650) or second largest (1330 and 1800) city in Western Europe.

Due to climate change the Slovenian capital Ljubljana is expected to see its mean annual temperature increase by 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. This is the largest increase throughout the European Union, and will be comparable to current temperatures recorded in Virginia Beach, USA. Northern European cities such as London, Paris and Berlin will see temperatures rise to levels currently experienced in the Australian cities of Canberra and Melbourne.

Analysis of ‘A dataset of GHG emissions for 6,200 cities in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean countries’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from http://data.europa.eu/88u/dataset/57a615eb-cfbc-435a-a8c5-553bd40f76c9 on 07 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) is the largest dedicated international initiative to promote climate action at city level, covering globally over 10,000 cities and in the European Union almost half the population by end of March 2020. The present dataset refers to a harmonised, complete and verified dataset of GHG inventories for 6,200 cities, signatories of the GCoM initiative as of end of 2019, in the: European Union, EFTA countries and UK, Western Balkans, Eastern and Southern EU neighbourhoods countries. The methodology and the general approach for the data collection can be found in Bertoldi et. al. 2018. Guidebook: How to develop a Sustainable Energy Climate Action Plan (SECAP). (2018) doi:10.2760/223399.

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

Roughly a third of EU citizens said they had heard about EU co-financed projects to improve their local area; of those “aware” citizens, three-quarters felt that the EU’s support had had a positive impact on development in their city or region. A large majority of EU citizens accepted that the Union’s regional policy served as a tool to reduce the gap between development levels of the various regions in the EU. When asked where EU regional support should be targeted, 75% of respondents said that it should go to regions with high unemployment. Educational, health and social infrastructure, and environmental issues, were regarded as being among the most important policy areas by almost all respondents. After these two policy areas, just over 8 in 10 EU citizens considered support for small businesses and employment training as important policy sectors. #####The results by volumes are distributed as follows: * Volume A: Countries * Volume AA: Groups of countries * Volume A' (AP): Trends * Volume AA' (AAP): Trends of groups of countries * Volume B: EU/socio-demographics * Volume C: Country/socio-demographics ---- Researchers may also contact GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences: http://www.gesis.org/en/home/

A table comparing the cost of living in various European Union countries, including expenses for rent, utilities, food, and transportation in major cities

Assessment of the political and economic situation of the country. Attitude to the European Union. Topics: Judgement on the general development of the country; judgement on the financial development of individual households in the last year and expectations on this for the next year; attitude to the free market economy; judgement on the speed of economic reforms as well as privatization of governmental companies; satisfaction with development of democracy in the country; assessment on the extent of respect of human rights in one´s country; attitude to the goals and activities of the European Union; designation of the country with which the future of one´s own country most likely will be tied; degree of familiarity of the aid programs called PHARE and TACIS for the countries of the former East Bloc; knowledge about the financial backer for the two programs; more advantages for the country or the EU through mutual relations; party preference; national or ethnic origins; native language; knowledge of foreign languages. Except in Russia the following additional question was posed: primarily used source of information about the policies of the EU. The following additional questions were posed in the countries that had signed the European Agreement: attitude regarding membership in the EU and NATO; groups having particular advantage or disadvantage from the tie with the EU. Also encoded was: region; city size; date of interview; time of start of interview; presence of other persons during the survey; willingness of respondent to cooperate.

The main focus topics are: 1. Political attitudes and questions on the European Union. 2. European Parliament. 3. Attitude to older people and questions on provision for old age. 4. Violence against children and young people. 5. Domestic violence against women. Topics: 1. political attitudes and questions on the European Union: citizenship; interest in politics; personal opinion leadership; self-assessment of extent to which informed about the EU; media use; trust in media, the judiciary, the police, military, church, trade unions, parties, large concerns, charitable organizations as well as national and supranational institutions; sources of information used or information channels about the EU and preferred means of information about the EU; possession of communication and media facilities and access; judgement on membership of the country in the EU; advantageousness of this membership; satisfaction with democracy at state level as well as in Europe; feeling of affiliation with village/city, region, country, Europe; knowledge, significance and trust in selected European institutions; self-assessment of extent to which informed about the Euro; sources of information used or information channels about the Euro; preferred information content of an information campaign about the Euro; attitude to a common European currency, foreign policy and defense policy; attitude to a Europeaen Central Bank independent from the member countries or responsible to the European Parliament; attitude to responsibility of the EU for matters that cannot effectively be solved on national, regional and local level; attitude to support of the president and the members of the European Commission by a majority of the European Parliament; attitude to school instruction about the work of European institutions; preference for national or European decision-making power in selected policy areas; desired priorities in EU policies, such as e.g. accepting new member countries, fight against poverty, environmental protection, consumer protection, fight against unemployment, reform of EU institutions, securing peace and protection of personality laws and democratic principles in Europe; fears in connection with the merger of nations into a united Europe; preferred new EU member countries; criteria for accepting countries; assessment of the area with the largest EU budget. 2. European Parliament: perception of reporting about the European Parliament in the media; the significance of the European Parliament for the EU; desire for greater significance of the European Parliament; election participation at the last European Election and intent to vote in the coming election for the European Parliament; assessment of representation of interests of European citizens by the European Parliament; most important interests that should be represented by the European Parliament. 3. Attitude to older people and questions on provision for old age: assumed development of pension age and pension payments; expected increase in the welfare state with increased support of older people; expected shift from governmental to more private pension programs; attitude to allowing paid work by retirees; attitude to legal protection against age discrimination; preference for care in a nursing home or people in need of care remaining in their domestic surroundings; looking after members of the family or friends in need of care and information on age and degree of relationship; person most able to provide nursing care; looking forward to one´s own retirement; preference for main proportion of pension payments from governmental sources, from employee contributions or from private provision for old age. 5. Violence against children and young people: knowledge of violence against children and young people and sources of information; subjective understanding of violence and bodily harm against children (scale); assumed normality of violence against children; assumed perpetrator and reasons for violence against children; acceptance of physical punishment of children; attitude to use of selected institutions, organizations or persons to protect children; assessment of the effectiveness of laws in one´s country regarding prevention of sexual and other forms of violence against children and regarding punishment of adults for sexual violence against children; assessment of the usefulness of various possibilities to combat violence against children; familiarity of the measures recommended by the EU to combat violence against children; attitude to participation of the EU in combating violence against children. 4. Domestic violence against women: knowledge of violence against women and sources of information; assumed normality of violence against women; subjective understanding of violence and of bodily injury against women (scale); assumed reasons for violence against women; acceptance of violence against women; attitude to use of selected institutions, organizations or persons to...

This database shows the availability of local climate mitigation plans, local climate adaptation plans, municipal energy plans, heat wave plans and flood risk plans of all 885 Urban Audit Core Cities of the 28 countries of the European Union. Additionally, it lists per Urban Audit Core City the membership in the largest climate networks [Old Covenant of Mayors Member (2020 goal); New Covenant of Mayors Member (2030 goal); Status (1-2-3); Mayors Adapt Commitment; Compact of Mayors Member (yes/no); Compact of Mayors Stage (Badge)].Furthermore, based on a typology of plans developed in Reckien et al., 2018 and Reckien et al., 2019, the database categorizes the plans into types, and specifies whether adaptation and mitigation aspects are jointly addressed in one plan ('joint plan'). Local Climate Mitigation and Local Climate Adaptation Plans of European Urban Audit Cities Date Submitted: 2020-05-14