EU trade balance for January-September 2009

EU trade stats for January-September 2009, detailed resultsm by Eurostat (released December 18):

Products:

The EU trade deficit decreased for energy (-172.4 bn euro in January-September 2009 compared with -293.7 bn in January-September 2008) and for raw materials (-14.1 bn compared with -31.8 bn).

The surplus fell for machinery and vehicles (+77.0 bn compared with +115.3 bn), but rose for chemicals (+58.8 bn compared with +56.8 bn).

Trade Partners:

EU trade flows with all of its major partners fell.

The largest decreases were recorded for exports to Russia (-40% in January-September 2009 compared with January-September 2008), Turkey (-27%), Brazil (-23%), South Korea (-22%) and the USA (-20%), and for imports from Russia (-42%), Norway (-30%), Japan and Brazil (both -28%) and Turkey (-26%). The smallest falls were observed for exports to China (-1%) and imports from Switzerland (-8%).

The EU trade surplus fell with the USA (+30.7 bn euro in January-September 2009 compared with +48.9 bn in January-September 2008) and Switzerland (+10.1 bn compared with +13.6 bn).

The EU trade deficit decreased with China (-99.1 bn compared with -120.4 bn), Russia (-34.6 bn compared with -61.2 bn), Norway (-24.6 bn compared with -40.5 bn) and Japan (-14.9 bn compared with -25.8 bn).

Concerning the total trade of Member States:
The largest surplus was observed in Germany (+91.7 bn euro in January-September 2009), followed by Ireland (+29.7 bn), the Netherlands (+27.9 bn) and Belgium (+11.0 bn).

The United Kingdom (-69.9 bn) registered the largest deficit, followed by France (-38.6 bn), Spain (-36.8 bn), Greece (-21.6 bn) and Portugal (-13.5 bn).