The chart above shows the most populous city in each EU state and the proportion of that nation's population that resides there. Luxembourg and Malta are obvious outliers due to their size but the rest of the EU still has quite a range from Berlin which only consists of just over one out of every twenty Germans to Riga which consists of just under one out of two Latvians.

Findings

There seems to be a pretty strong correlation between the size of the state and the number of people that pack themselves into one city.

Only three countries manage to have less than one out of every ten citizens packed into their most populous city.

Eight countries have over one-third of their population in their most populous city.

Fourteen out of 28 states have over one-quarters of their population in their most populous city.

Caveats

The data is from 2011 except for Latvia (2015), Luxembourg (2009), Malta (2009), Austria (2013), and the United Kingdom (2015).

The data for Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal is estimated.

Details

Countries with large economies like Germany, France, and the United Kingdom tend to avoid cramming all of their citizens into one city.

As far as the entire European Union is concerned, only 2.38 percent of the population lives in the Union's largest city, London.

Sources

Eurostat. 2017. "Data Explorer." Accessed December 11, 2017. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=urb_lpop1&lang=en.