This fascinating map shows where in Europe couples get married, and where they don't

A bundle of data on Europe's regions from the European Statistical System were released a little earlier this month, and it's crammed with interesting nuggets of information on Europe's social and economic position.

One of those is where people are and aren't married in the EU. Eurostat splits families into registered partnerships, consensual unions, lone-parent families and married couples.

The darker colours show places where a higher proportion of family unions are based on married couples, and some of the clear divisions are astounding:

• The Germany-France split is quite clear, with the Germans more heavily favouring marriage.
• There is some significant division in Portugal between the North and the South.
• Ireland clearly has higher marriage rates than the UK.
• And Southern Italy is clearly more likely to marry than the North.

Latvia also stands out also the country with the lowest proportion of married couples, while Greek families are seemingly very likely to be made up of married couples.

You can see the legend of the map on the right, giving some context to the colours. So for example, in most of southern Italy, over 80% of "family nuclei" are married couples.

It's just one of the maps you can draw up with Eurostat's statistical atlas.

It's a pretty decent resource, and you can create maps for dozens of different data sets, from the change in unemployment during the post-financial crisis years to the number of hospital beds or lone-parent families.