A MONTH-long strike of car transporters in Italy has had a negative impact on the amount of new cars sold across Europe, latest figures reveal.

Sales during May in Italy tumbled by more than 27% and the figure for total European sales was down by 1.7%. Sales for the year to date across Europe were also down, by 2.45% to 6,640,799 units from 6,803,754 for the same period last year.

Commenting on sales results for the month of May, a spokesman for the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), which produced the figures, said: ‘While the month had one more working day in almost all countries, the May figure was heavily influenced by the significant drop of 2.4% in total Europe, and of 1.3% in the EU-15.

‘With regard to national situations and aside from Italy, the UK was the only other market among the main five to post a decrease (-3.4%), while France (+8.4%), Spain (+7.1%) and Germany (+6.2%) showed encouraging growth. With the only exceptions of Greece (-3.2%) and the Netherlands (-3.8%), all the other 11 EU-15 countries reported a positive variation, ranging from 0.5% in Austria to +14.9% in Denmark. EFTA countries (-2.4%) and new EU member states (-7%) reported losses.’

Country		Jan-May 05		Jan-May 04		Variance
Austria		138,362		18,277		+0.1%
Belgium		237,356		249,893		-5.0%
Denmark		57,103		46,103		+24.3%
Finland		72,019		70,437		+2.2%
France		904,616		850,041		+6.4%
Germany		1,360,168		1,344,954		+1.1%
Greece		127,850		134,888		-5.2%
Ireland		122,829		108,229		+13.5%
Italy		987,.557		1,093,246		-9.7%
Luxembourg		24,375		24,133		+1.0%
Netherlands		228,844		236,022		-3.0%
Portugal		88,976		86,400		+3.0%
Spain		648,219		630,622		+2.8%
Sweden		110,712		108,316		+2.2%
UK		1,068,862		1,137,488		-6.0%
European Union		6,178,032		6,259,049		-1.3%