Belgium among EU's happiest countries, poll finds

Is Belgium one of the happiest countries in the Europe? Apparently so, according to a poll by Eurostat published this week.

The EU's official statistics body asked people across the member states how often they felt happy - from "constantly" to "never".

The in-between stages were "most of the time", "often" and "sometimes".

Happy smiley Belgium came out joint-top with the Netherlands, Austria and Finland.

Some 76% of Belgian respondents reported that they felt at least "mostly happy" in the four weeks preceding the survey.

Flemish liberal party Open VLD took the opportunity to tweet: "We are used to complaining - and not everything is perfect - but in the end things aren't so bad here."

Next happiest were Luxembourg (74%), Spain (72%) and Denmark (70%). The gloomiest European countries were Latvia (31%) and Bulgaria (35%).

The study was carried out in 2018 - but it's not clear at what time of the year. The EU-wide happiness average was 61%.

Eurostat mentions in a footnote that "data is not available for Ireland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom".