The number of business registrations in Europe slightly decreased in both the first and second quarter of 2022, in comparison to the previous quarters, according to Eurostat.
In general, in the first two quarters of 2022 – and also during the whole 2021 – business registrations levels are higher than during the pre-Covid pandemic period of 2015-2019.
Regarding the number of declarations of bankruptcies, there were considerable decreases in the first and second quarters of 2020.
In Cyprus, there were 5,335 business registrations in 2020 at a rate of 8.87%. And 2,927 business bankruptcies were filed at a rate of 4.81%.
The decrease in bankruptcies, observed in many Member States in the first two quarters of 2020, can be explained by the government measures supporting businesses during the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. These had allowed the businesses to avoid declaring bankruptcy.
After that, the number of bankruptcy declarations increased for three consecutive quarters, from the third quarter of 2020 until the first quarter of 2021.
In 2020, business registration rates among EU member states ranged from 4.6% in Greece, 5.4% in Austria, 6.5% in Italy, 6.7% in Ireland, 6.8% in Sweden and 6.9% in Belgium, 11.3% in France and Latvia, 12.1% in Estonia, 12.2% in Portugal, 14.1% in Malta and 18.1% in Lithuania.
