Car sales in the European Union recovered rapidly in April.
The European manufacturers' association ACEA announced on Wednesday that new car registrations had more than tripled to 862,000 vehicles in the past month.
The strong increase is due to the fact that car production and trade largely came to a standstill across Europe a year ago due to the fight against the pandemic.
The pre-crisis level has not yet been reached.
According to ACEA, almost 300,000 fewer units hit the streets last month than in April 2019.
Since the beginning of the year, car sales have risen by around a quarter to 3.4 million vehicles. The greatest growth among the large EU countries was in Italy (plus 68 percent) and France (51 percent), followed by Spain (18.8 percent) and Germany (7.8 percent). In Great Britain, which no longer belongs to the EU, new registrations rose by 16 percent.