EU International Trade: goods trade balance 2002-2023

The European Union went from consistently running a trade surplus since 2012, to running a trade deficit worth almost 430 billion euros in 2022. This sudden surge in the bloc's deficit was largely caused by a more than doubling of the cost of fuel imports due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the EU's subsequent boycott of Russian energy exports. While in theory the EU's trade balance should only reflect its trade with countries outside of the union, as internal EU exports and imports should balance out, due to accounting irregularities the EU in practice runs a trade surplus with itself in most years. Following the substantial trade deficit opened up in 2022, the EU returned to running a trade suplus in 2023, when it recorded a suplus of almost 38 billion euros.