The highest at-risk-of-poverty rates can be found in Southern and Eastern Europe. There are also large regional differences within countries such as Spain and Italy, with substantially higher at-risk-of-poverty rates found in the southern regions. All the regions in the Nordic countries have at-risk-of-poverty rates below the EU average.
It is important to note that there are some problems with this indicator, both with respect to data availability and due to varying approaches to its measurement between countries. For most countries, the indicator is available at NUTS 2 level. However, in some big countries, for example Germany, France and the UK, only national level data is available, making regional comparisons difficult.