This is a list of the largest metropolitan areas of Europe. The population figures for both the metropolitan area and central city are given.
In some cases, the list of Largest urban areas of the European Union would give figures that better reflect common understanding of the different cities' sizes as the metropolitan areas include also non-urban and suburban areas and administrative borders for cities often cut across most urban areas. The list of Larger Urban Zones (LUZ) in the European Union can also be consulted for an attempt by Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office, to provide harmonized data for EU metropolitan areas. The list below includes cities which are not part of the European Union and therefore do not benefit from the harmonized definition used by Eurostat and the different National Statistics Offices of the European Union.
The list also includes multicentric conurbations that are not based on single central city. In addition, the numbers below are only rough projections based on historical growth rates. As in the rest of the world, metropolitan areas in Europe are much debated, and different sources will provide different statistics (including Wikipedia's own worldwide list of metropolitan areas by population). These figures should be seen as an interpretation, not as conclusive fact. In most cases, they are towards the top of the range of figures quoted for each metropolitan area. Some of these areas are very much regions rather than single settlements. Unless otherwise indicated, metropolitan area figures are estimates for 2008-01-01 from World Gazetteer.
NB To access the relevant Eurostat reports, once the reference has been followed, click at 'Indicators for larger urban zones'. In the new window that opens, click the 'TIME' button and set the time period (1999_2003). Then click the 'CITIES' button and choose the cities for which you want to access the data. Then click the 'NEXT' button, click 'OK' at the Javascript alert box, and then click 'DOWNLOAD'.
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