Goods imported and exported by the EU can be invoiced in a range of currencies. In 2021, among the 15 EU Member States for which data are available, the US dollar was the most used currency for extra-EU imports with a share of more than half (51%) of all extra-EU imports, while the euro accounted for 39%.
This information comes from data on extra-EU trade by invoicing currency published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.
For imports, the share of the dollar increased by 1.6 percentage points (pp) between 2020 and 2021, while the share for the euro increased by only 0.3 pp. The leading position of the US dollar for imports of goods is partly driven by large imports of oil, which are traditionally traded in US dollars.
Source datasets: ext_lt_invcur and DS-018995
For the combined exports of these 15 Member States, the euro was the leading currency accounting for more than half (54%) of all extra-EU exports, while the US dollar accounted for under a third (31%). The share of the euro increased by 4.6 pp between 2020 and 2021, while the share of the dollar increased by only 0.8 pp.
Source datasets: ext_lt_invcur and DS-018995
For more information:
Methodological notes:
- Data collection for the dataset “Extra-EU trade, shares by invoicing currency” is only mandatory for even reference years. As a result, the EU aggregate is based on 15 EU Member States, accounting for 61% of extra-EU imports and 59% of extra-EU exports. Data for 2021 is not available for Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, France, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Austria, Sweden.
- Seven other countries also provided data for 2021. These were Iceland, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.
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