EU-UK trade

Considering trade in goods, the EU increased its surplus with the UK from €125.9 billion in 2019 to €155 billion in 2023. The UK is the EU’s second largest market for goods exports (after the US), and its third largest goods importer. The share of goods exports to the UK as a total share of goods exports decreased from 15 % in 2019 to 13 % in 2023, while the share of UK imports to the EU dropped from 10 % of total goods imports in 2019 to 7.1 % in 2023. Eurostat data on trade in services shows that the UK remains the EU’s second largest trading partner (after the US). The EU slightly increased its trade surplus from €44.74 billion in 2019 to €46 billion in 2022, while the share of exports to the UK dropped from 21 % of total exports of services to 18.8 % (the share of imports of services remained roughly the same, at around 18 %).
On the British side, the EU accounts for more than half of the UK’s total trade in goods and services (imports and exports). For the UK, the share of goods exports to the EU as a percentage of total goods exports remained at roughly the same level between 2019 and 2023 (around 48.5 %), while the share of goods imports from the EU increased from 54.2 % of total goods imports to 56 % in the same period.
For UK services, the changes were less pronounced: the share of exports of services to the EU fell slightly, from 37.4 % of total exports of services in 2019 to 36.2 % in 2023. The share of imports of services from the EU also fell slightly, from 48.4 % of total imports of services to 46 % in the same period.