Online shopping has become routine across Europe, but the other side of the transaction has not kept pace. In France, roughly two out of three internet users bought something online last year, yet only one in four sold anything. That imbalance, quiet as it may seem, places France in the top third of the continent for what might be called digital accumulation: the tendency of purchased goods to stay put rather than re-enter the market.
A new analysis by YourSurprise, drawing on the Eurostat ICT Household Survey and INSEE data, quantifies this gap through an Accumulation Index: the percentage of internet users who buy online minus the percentage who sell. The higher the score, the wider the gulf between what flows into households and what flows back out. France scores 41 points, three above the EU-wide average of 38 and enough to rank it 10th among 28 member states.
A continent of keepers, ranked
Ireland tops the index at 55 points, followed by Czechia and Luxembourg (both 53) and Germany and Sweden (both 51). At the opposite end, Bulgaria scores the lowest at 18. France, with 41 points, shares the upper tier with economies as different as Greece, Cyprus, and the Netherlands, all of which cluster around the low 40s despite wide variation in their absolute shopping rates.
The full table underscores an important nuance: a high accumulation score does not require a high rate of online purchasing. Greece reaches 43 with just 48% of its population buying online, because only 5% sell. The Netherlands also scores 43, but with an 84% buyer rate offset by 41% of users reselling. The common factor is not how much a country shops but how little of what it buys comes back to market.
| # | Country | Buyers (%) | Sellers (%) | Index |
| 1 | Ireland | 75 | 20 | 55 |
| 2 | Czechia | 68 | 15 | 53 |
| 3 | Luxembourg | 78 | 25 | 53 |
| 4 | Germany | 74 | 23 | 51 |
| 5 | Sweden | 76 | 25 | 51 |
| 6 | Denmark | 80 | 34 | 46 |
| 7 | Greece | 48 | 5 | 43 |
| 8 | Cyprus | 53 | 10 | 43 |
| 9 | Netherlands | 84 | 41 | 43 |
| 10 | France | 66 | 25 | 41 |
| 11 | Belgium | 68 | 28 | 40 |
| EU Average | 58 | 20 | 38 | |
| 12 | Estonia | 65 | 27 | 38 |
| 13 | Spain | 56 | 19 | 37 |
| 14 | Austria | 62 | 26 | 36 |
| 15 | Croatia | 50 | 14 | 36 |
| 16 | Malta | 49 | 31 | 18 |
| 17 | Italy | 47 | 13 | 34 |
| 18 | Portugal | 46 | 14 | 32 |
| 19 | Slovakia | 56 | 24 | 32 |
| 20 | Poland | 52 | 22 | 30 |
| 21 | Finland | 73 | 43 | 30 |
| 22 | Latvia | 55 | 26 | 29 |
| 23 | Lithuania | 55 | 28 | 27 |
| 24 | Romania | 33 | 7 | 26 |
| 25 | Hungary | 59 | 34 | 25 |
| 26 | Slovenia | 54 | 31 | 23 |
| 27 | Bulgaria | 27 | 9 | 18 |
“France’s data tells an interesting story about how digital purchasing habits are evolving. When more than six in ten French internet users are buying online but only one in four is selling, it reflects a broader shift in how people relate to the things they own. Gifts, in particular, tend to stay, and understanding that dynamic matters for anyone thinking about what people genuinely value.”
Spokesperson, YourSurprise
Fewer than four in ten French buyers resell
Another way to read the data is through the resell-to-buy ratio: the proportion of online buyers who also sell. In France, the 25% seller rate represents 37.9% of the 66% buyer rate. In practical terms, for every 100 French people who purchased something online, fewer than 38 went on to list something for sale.
That figure falls in the lower half of EU nations. Denmark’s ratio sits at 42.5%, Hungary reaches 57.6%, and Malta’s stands at 63.3%. The comparison suggests that French consumers are proportionally less inclined to recirculate goods than buyers in several other markets, even those with comparable or lower overall shopping activity.
The pattern is consistent with France’s above-average accumulation score: a sustained, high-volume purchasing habit paired with relatively modest resale participation. The gap is not the widest in Europe, but it operates at a higher absolute level of buying activity than most of the countries that share its range.
Eleven nations above the EU benchmark
Of the 28 member states in the dataset, 11 exceed the 38-point EU average. France is one of them, alongside Ireland, Czechia, Luxembourg, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Estonia matches the benchmark exactly. The remaining 16 fall below it.
What connects the above-average group is not a shared level of e-commerce maturity. Online buyer rates in this cluster range from 48% (Greece) to 84% (the Netherlands). The thread that runs through all of them is a comparatively low seller rate relative to buying activity. In each case, the secondary market absorbs a smaller share of what the primary market generates, leaving more purchased goods in the hands of their original buyers.
How the index was calculated
The Accumulation Index subtracts the share of internet users who sold goods or services online from the share who made an online purchase, both expressed as percentages of the surveyed population. The primary data source is the Eurostat ICT Household Survey (2023), which covers EU residents aged 16 to 74 living in ordinary housing who had used the internet in the three months before the survey. Supplementary data for France was sourced from INSEE. The EU average baseline uses Eurostat’s reported figures of 58% online buyers and 20% online sellers, producing a baseline score of 38 points. France’s specific inputs are 66% buyers minus 25% sellers, yielding a score of 41.
Data Sources
Eurostat, ICT Household Survey 2023
ec.europa.eu/eurostat – ICT Household Survey
INSEE, Digital Behaviour and E-Commerce Survey
insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8616823
Full research dataset
Study conducted by YourSurprise
About YourSurprise
Founded by two friends with a single idea: make gifts that people actually remember. The company designs personalised presents built to turn ordinary moments into meaningful ones.