New EU trade data shows UK’s huge importance to the EU

The EU’s official statistics agency has published its latest trade figures, which it reports as if the UK were not leaving. But crunching the numbers reveals that the UK is set to rival the USA as the EU’s largest export market in the world, eclipsing even China. Parliament currently seems obsessed with the idea of a UK-EU customs union – but these figures show that the EU would be the major beneficiary of such a policy, while the UK would have to sacrifice the independent trade policy we have been dreaming of for so long.

This article was researched and published by Brexit Facts4EU.Org, and is reproduced with kind permission. 

Whilst the UK media has been focused on politics, the EU’s official statistics agency recently released its latest trade figures. Brexit Facts4EU.Org now presents its explosive headline analysis. And you don’t have to be a statistician to understand the importance of this.

The international trade figures published by the EU Commission’s statistics agency last month were for 2018. It continues to report these as if the UK were not leaving: nowhere in the information released did the Commission’s statistics agency refer to Brexit.

The reality is that when you take out the UK from the EU’s 2018 figures, the conclusions drawn would be very different. The statistics agency was of course reporting on 2018, and so they were entirely correct in the data they presented. However, last year this same agency started reporting ‘EU27’ data on many subjects, knowing that the UK was leaving and knowing that a large number of people worldwide would be starting to plan for an EU without the UK.

The EU hasn’t shown the impact of Brexit on EU trade, so we will. Below we show the top export markets for the EU in 2018, with the UK as a member. We have analysed all the data and so we also show the same information with the UK separated out. In other words, what would the figures have looked like if we had already left?

The charts below show percentages – which countries represent the biggest buyers of EU goods. When the UK becomes an ‘export market’ to the EU27, these percentages change: the UK becomes the second biggest buyer of EU goods in the world.

The UK is set to rival the USA as the EU’s largest export market in the world, eclipsing even China. For the EU, based on its own 2018 figures, the UK’s market would have been 71% larger than that of China. The UK market is thus vital to the EU27: almost as large as the USA and is far more important to the EU27 than China.