Eurostat: EU imports from Russia dropped 86% between Q1 2022 and Q1 2025
There was a 58 per cent decline in EU exports to Russia and an 86 per cent decline in imports from Russia between the first quarters of 2022 and 2025, the result of the EU imposing various import and export restrictions on various products, the bloc’s statistics agency Eurostat said on May 21.
More recently, in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the previous quarter, imports from Russia decreased while exports to Russia increased, Eurostat said.
The EU’s trade deficit with Russia stood at 0.8 billion euro, significantly below the deficit peak of 46.6 billion euro recorded in the first quarter of 2022.
Looking at the changes in Russia’s shares in extra-EU trade, both exports and imports dropped considerably below the levels prior to Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s share in the extra-EU exports fell from 3.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2022 to 1.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2025. Over the same period, the share of extra-EU imports from Russia fell from 9.3 per cent to 1.3 per cent.
The EU’s total trade balance with Russia is strongly correlated with the balance for energy products, Eurostat said.
High prices for energy products in 2021 and 2022 caused a considerable trade deficit for energy products, peaking at 42.8 billion euro in the second quarter of 2022. However, import restrictions and falling energy prices significantly reduced this trade deficit to 5.8 billion euro in the first quarter of 2025.
The value of EU imports of liquefied natural gas from Russia increased considerably between the first quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2022 as prices increased sharply. Russia’s share in EU imports of liquefied natural gas decreased from 22 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 to 19 per cent in the first quarter of 2025. The highest share in the first quarter of 2025 was observed for the United States (48 per cent).
The value of EU imports of natural gas in gaseous state from Russia increased considerably between the first quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2022 as prices increased sharply. In the following quarters both volume and value decreased considerably. Russia’s share in EU imports of natural gas in gaseous state dropped from 48 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 to 17 per cent in the first quarter of 2025. In this period the share for Norway (+11 per cent) increased most, but Algeria (+5 per cent) became the largest partner with 30 per cent.
The value of the EU’s imports of iron and steel from Russia increased strongly in 2021 mainly due to rising prices, Eurostat said. Subsequently, drops in volume and value were observed because of sanctions on several products. Russia’s share in extra-EU imports of iron and steel fell by 10 pp in the first quarter of 2021 compared with the first quarter of 2025, Eurostat said. South Korea and China were the largest origin for EU imports of iron and steel, both with a share of 10 per cent in the first quarter of 2025.
Even though nickel was not on the list of directly sanctioned products, the EU began diversifying its dependence on Russia by increasing nickel imports from other countries. Between the first quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2025, the EU’s share of nickel imports from Russia dropped from 41.2 per cent to 18.9 per cent (a decrease of 22 percentage points), while the import shares from the US (+12 pp), Norway (+4 pp), and the United Kingdom (+4 pp) increased during the same period.
In the first quarter of 2021, Russia was the largest supplier of petroleum oils to the EU. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major shift occurred in the EU’s petroleum oil trade.
The EU ban on seaborne imports of Russian crude oil, which entered into force on December 5 2022, along with the subsequent embargo on refined oil products, contributed to a significant decrease in imports of these goods from Russia.
As a consequence, the share of petroleum oil imports from Russia fell from 29 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 to just 2 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 (see Figure 6). Over the same period, import shares from the US (+6 pp), Norway (+4 pp), and Kazakhstan (+3 pp) increased.
In the first quarter of 2025, Russia remained the largest supplier of fertilisers — a category of goods not yet affected by restrictions or import duties.
Russia’s share in extra-EU imports of fertilisers slightly fell from 28 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 to 26 per cent in the first quarter of 2025. In the same period of 2025. Egypt (20 per cent) and Morocco (10 per cent) were the next largest sources of fertiliser imports, Eurostat said.
(Photo: Patrick Moore/ sxc.hu)
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