Inland waterway freight transport down by 3% in 2025

In 2025, freight transport on EU inland waterways reached 118.0 billion tonne-kilometres (tkm), indicating a 3.0% decrease (-3.7 billion tkm) compared with 2024.

Between 2015-2017, freight transport on the EU's inland waterways remained steady at about 145-146 billion tkm. It dropped sharply in 2018, partly recovered in 2019 and 2021, but stayed below the earlier peak. From 2022 the decline accelerated, hitting a low of 116.4 billion tkm in 2023, before a modest rise to 121.6 billion tkm in 2024.

Germany and the Netherlands were the main contributors to EU inland waterway transport in 2025, with 42.7 billion tkm and 42.2 billion tkm, respectively. Together, transport on inland waterways in these 2 countries accounted for 71.9% of the EU total.

This information comes from data on inland waterway freight transport published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on inland waterway freight transport.

Source dataset: iww_go_atygo

International transport accounted for more than half of total transport

At EU level, international transport accounted for more than half of the total transport in 2025 (54.7%), national transport represented 24.9% and transit transport 20.4%.

For 5 EU countries, international transport represented the highest shares of transport. In Austria, international transport in inland waterways accounted for 74.0% of the total, with Germany and Belgium following, with 64.1% and 57.2%, respectively.

On the other hand, national transport was predominant in Czechia (97.4%), Poland (82.2%) and France (60.2%). In Lithuania, Finland and Sweden there was only national transport in 2025.

Croatia (97.2%), Bulgaria (92.8%), Luxembourg (87.9%), Slovakia (83.0%) and Hungary (60.1%) had higher shares of transit transport, mainly due to their geographical position.

Source datasets: iww_go_atygo, iww_go_qnave

Metal ores: most transported goods

Among the categories of transported goods, metal ores accounted for the largest share (22.2%) of the total transport measured in tonne-kilometres. This was followed by coke and refined petroleum products (16.2%) and chemicals, rubber and plastic and nuclear fuel (14.3%).

Compared with 2024, inland waterway transport of products of agriculture recorded the largest decrease (-19.7%), while coal and crude petroleum saw the largest increase (+21.3%).