New cars versus used imports

Share of new cars in passenger-car registrations, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Romania, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria, Portugal and Greece, latest three years

A registration statistic counts every car that enters a country's register for the first time, and in much of northern and eastern Europe that is not mainly new cars. A car bought second-hand in Germany and driven to Vilnius is a first registration in Lithuania just as a new Toyota sold in Helsinki is one in Finland. The split between the two matters for reading any other figure on this site, from brand rankings to the electric share, so this page shows it for every country that publishes it.

Where the markets stand

Spain has the most new-car-heavy market of the 15 shown: in September 2026, 88.3% of its 107 032 registrations were new cars. At the other end, Lithuania registered 13 702 used imports against 3 450 new cars in September 2026, a new share of only 20.0%. Luxembourg (68.1%), Greece (67.1%), Finland (65.8%), Portugal (64.0%), the Netherlands (60.3%), Czechia (58.2%), Ireland (47.8%), Estonia (45.9%), Poland (41.5%), Belgium (33.1%), Latvia (30.8%), Austria (29.6%) and Romania (28.7%) lie between them. The imports themselves differ too: the average used import was 5.9 years old in the Netherlands but 12.0 years old in Romania.

Compared with the same month a year earlier, the new-car share is up 1.1 points in Spain, down 1.5 points in Luxembourg, up 2.3 points in Greece, up 3.6 points in Finland, up 2.0 points in Portugal, up 4.2 points in the Netherlands, down 3.3 points in Czechia, down 2.0 points in Ireland, down 2.0 points in Estonia, up 0.8 points in Poland, up 2.9 points in Belgium, down 4.2 points in Latvia, up 2.6 points in Austria, up 0.9 points in Romania and down 3.1 points in Lithuania. Where the origin is published, the pattern is the same: in Lithuania, Germany supplied 33.9% of used imports in September 2026 and the Netherlands 7.7%; in Finland, Germany supplied 46.4% of used imports in September 2026 and Sweden 27.1%; in Luxembourg, Germany supplied 53.9% of used imports in September 2026 and Belgium 20.8%.

Why the Baltic markets import so many used cars

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have no domestic car production, incomes below the EU average and, since joining the single market in 2004, free movement of goods with Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordic countries, which sell off large fleets of three-to-ten-year-old cars every year. Lithuania in particular developed a trade in importing, repairing and re-exporting used cars, which is one reason its registration counts are high relative to the size of the country and why its register loses a large share of each month's cars to export again within a year or two. Finland sits between the two groups: a large new-car market with a smaller but steady flow of used imports, most of them fairly young cars from Germany and Sweden.

What the split changes

Three things follow from the split. Model rankings in import-heavy markets are dominated by models that were popular in Germany five to ten years ago, which is why a BMW 3 Series or a Volkswagen Passat can top a Baltic table in a month when no dealer sold many of them new; the monthly pages show new and used columns side by side so the two can be told apart. Electric shares are diluted by imports, since a ten-year-old import is almost never electric, although used Teslas now form a visible part of the Baltic electric tables. And average fleet age, CO₂ and safety statistics for these countries are driven by what is imported rather than by what is sold new, so a policy that changes import taxes or emissions-based registration fees shows up in these series faster than any change in new-car incentives. Each country's imports page breaks the used cars down by age bracket, and where the register records it, by country of origin and by brand.