INFORMA test
Noise
Noise is increasingly cited by Europeans as an environmental nuisance, with a growing share of the public complaining about excessive noise levels. The Environmental Noise Directive is the EU’s main instrument for identifying and combating noise pollution. It focuses on three action areas:
- determination of exposure to environmental noise;
- ensuring that information on environmental noise and its effects is made available to the public;
- preventing and reducing environmental noise where necessary and particularly where exposure levels can induce harmful effects on human health and preserving environmental noise quality where it is good.
The final indicator presented in this chapter – the share of the population living in households considering that they suffer from noise – is included in the EU’s SDG indicator set for 2023. In 2020, approximately one in six persons (or 17.6 % of the EU population) considered themselves to be living in a household that suffered from noise from neighbours or from the street. Across NUTS level 2 regions, the highest shares – more than 30.0 % – were principally recorded in densely populated, urban regions and/or popular holiday destinations. The highest proportion was observed in the Spanish autonomous region of Ciudad de Ceuta (34.1 %), while there were eight other regions that had shares that were higher than 30.0 %:
- Región de Murcia and Canarias (also in Spain);
- Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland in the Netherlands;
- Algarve in Portugal, Attiki in Greece, Leipzig in Germany and Malta (a single region at this level of detail).
In 2020, the largest inter-regional variations in the proportion of people considering that they were suffering from noise were observed in Greece and Spain. In Greece, the highest regional share was recorded in the capital region of Attiki (32.2 %), while the lowest share was in the island region of Voreio Aigaio (6.5 %). There was a similarly wide range observed in Spain: the highest proportion was recorded in Ciudad de Ceuta (already noted above; 34.1 %) and the lowest in Extremadura (11.5 %). By contrast, there was a relatively small range between the different regions of Slovakia, Finland and Sweden. Slovakia was also of interest, insofar as its capital region of Bratislavský kraj had a particularly low share of people considering that they were suffering from noise (6.5 %) – the lowest share among any of the EU’s capital regions.
At the bottom end of the distribution, the lowest regional shares of people considering that they were suffering from noise were generally recorded in rural and sparsely populated regions. In 2020, there were only three NUTS level 2 regions that recorded shares that were less than 5.0 %: Severozapaden in Bulgaria, and Közép-Dunántúl and Nyugat-Dunántúl in the north-west of Hungary.
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(%, by NUTS 2 regions)
Source: Eurostat (ilc_mddw01) and EU-SILC
People living in a household that consider they are suffering from noise
The data on people living in a household that consider they are suffering from noise is derived from EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC). It is updated every three years; no data will be published for the 2021 and 2022 reference years.
The indicator measures the proportion of the population who declare that they are affected either by noise from neighbours or from the street (traffic, business, factory). Because the assessment of noise pollution is subjective, it should be noted that the indicator accounts for both levels of noise pollution, as well as people’s standards of what level of noise they consider to be acceptable. Therefore, an increase in the value of the indicator may not necessarily indicate a similar increase in noise pollution levels, but could instead be linked to a decrease in the noise levels that European citizens are willing to tolerate (and vice versa).
The share of people that consider they are suffering from noise is part of the EU’s SDG indicator set in 2023. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 3 on good health and well-being and SDG 11 on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.