Quarter of Cypriots cannot afford to heat homes

The number of people in Cyprus who could not afford to heat their homes in 2016 was almost three times the EU average, according to an infograph released by Eurostat on Friday.

Nine per cent of people in the EU said they could not afford to heat their home sufficiently, according to the stats.

The largest share of people who said they were unable to heat their home was recorded in Bulgaria at 39 per cent, followed by Lithuania and Greece both at 29 per cent, Cyprus 24 per cent and Portugal 22 per cent. On the other end of the scale, less than 2 per cent of the population face this problem in Luxembourg and Finland.

According to Eurostat, this index, after peaking in 2012 at 11 per cent on average, has fallen continuously every year since.