This question is answered by the Norwegian Statistical Office. In 2022, Norway was the fifth most expensive country in Europe when looking at household consumer price levels. Despite the high price level, Norwegians had the second highest level of consumption in Europe.
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According to preliminary data from the European Purchasing Power Survey (ec.europa.eu/eurostat), in 2022 the level prices in Norway was 43 percent higher than the average for the 27 EU Member States.
This is actually a slight decrease compared to the previous year, when we had the third highest price level.
In Iceland, the price level was 59 percent higher than the EU average. However, the most expensive was in the country to which wealthy Norwegians have been going en masse recently - in Switzerland. There, prices were as much as 74 percent higher than the EU average. Ireland and Denmark had a price level similar to Norway and were the most expensive countries in the EU. Then there is Luxembourg and our Nordic neighbors Finland and Sweden.
The areas with the lowest price levels for private households are Turkey and many countries in the Balkan Peninsula, where the price level in 2022 was around half the EU average.
Electricity was record expensive in 2022
If we look at individual groups of goods and services, then, unsurprisingly, “alcohol and tobacco” were the ones where the Norwegian price level was the highest, as much as 135 percent above the EU average. However, this was only slightly higher than in Iceland and Ireland.
Electricity was record-breakingly expensive in our country in 2022. However, energy products were the only individual product group whose level prices in Norway was lower than in the EU. This is due, among other things, to the fact that many European countries use gas as a heating source. Switzerland was the most expensive for food and drink, both in shops and restaurants, and for clothing.
If we compare price levels in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, we see that all three countries had prices above the EU average for all nine consumption groups presented, but only for "alcohol and tobacco", "housing, lighting and fuel" and "postal and telecommunications” differences were particularly large.
Even though Norway has one of the highest price levels in Europe, we are still at the forefront when it comes to personal consumption per capita. Price-adjusted consumer spending in Norway was 26 percent higher than the EU average in 2022, unchanged from the previous year. Compared to Denmark and Sweden, consumption in these countries was around 10 percent above average.
The most relatively costly country was Switzerland, where spending was 17 percent higher than average. The Balkan countries were also at the bottom of the list, with Albania at the bottom of the list. In Turkey, where the lowest price level was recorded, spending has increased significantly in recent years and in 2022 it was 80 percent of the EU average.
If we look at individual areas, our relative spending was highest in the main groups "clothing and footwear", "transportation", "furniture etc." and “culture and recreation”. Here we exceeded the EU average by over 50 percent. For most groups we also had higher expenses than our neighbors in Sweden and Denmark. For three consumption groups, "alcohol and tobacco", "postal and telecommunications services" and "hotels and restaurants", our spending was below the EU average.
Norwegian GDP is more than twice as high as in EU countries
The European Purchasing Power Survey is also used to convert national gross domestic products (GDP) into comparable figures. GDP is a measure of overall economic activity in a country. In 2022, price-adjusted GDP per capita in Norway exceeded twice the EU average for the first time. Norway still occupies "only" third place, but it is clearly closing the gap to Luxembourg and Ireland, which are ahead of us. Switzerland is next, with Denmark remaining in fifth place. Sweden dropped two places to ninth.
The Balkan countries have the lowest GDP per capita – Albania's GDP was only 1/3 of the EU-27 average. Of the 27 Member States, Bulgaria was at the bottom with a 41 percent lower GDP.
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Source: Statistics Norway
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