E-commerce Europe, an alliance of players in the e-commerce sector, has released research that shows that the e-commerce market in Europe this year is set to turn over more than €500 billion.

On the back of 13% growth last year, turnover hit €455.3bn. This growth has actually been slowing since 2012-13. Between 2011-15, the CAGR measurement of growth showed an annual increase of 17% on average, or a €200bn increase in online sales.

E-commerce Europe believe however that the market is far from saturated. Though growth is set to slow further, it will experience double digit growth in the region of 12%. This will mean that the European e-commerce market is set to break through the €500bn mark and will hit at least €510bn. Western Europe will take the lion’s share of this with €252bn, while Central Europe will see a turnover of €89.5bn.

Of the 10 largest B2C e-commerce markets in Europe, the UK is well ahead of the rest with a turnover of €157.1bn in 2015 and will amount to more than a third of total market sales in the whole of Europe. France is in second place with a projected €64.9bn turnover, while Germany is set to take €59.7bn. Beyond these three countries, the European market is much smaller, with the fourth placed Russia only turning over €20.5bn and Spain taking €18.2bn in this period.

The next countries in the top ten are Italy (€16.6bn), the Netherlands (€16.1bn), Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. The research has found that travel and holidays were the main things bought online. The B2C e-commerce market indirectly creates 2.5 million jobs around Europe, in around 750,000 online jobs and ventures.

How this will change with a possible Brexit on the part of the UK is not immediately known, though this could warp the real figures away from those projected by the researchers.