European Union member states imported €3.47 trillion worth of services from non-EU countries in 2024, according to new international trade data from Eurostat.
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a multilateral agreement to cover trade in services, classifies the services trade according to four modes, with the largest share of EU service imports coming through Mode 3 – commercial presence: ‘by a service supplier of one country, through a commercial presence in the territory of another country’.
This category accounted for close to three fifths (58.9%) of total service imports in the EU in 2024, accounting for €2.044 trillion.
Mode 1 – cross-border supply: ‘from the territory of one country into the territory of another country’, accounted for just under a third (31.3%) of imports, or €1.087 trillion.
Elsewhere, Mode 2 – consumption abroad: ‘in the territory of one country to the service consumer of another country’ accounted for 6.6% of service imports, or €229 billion. Finally, Mode 4 – presence of natural persons: ‘by a service supplier of one country, through the presence of natural persons of that country in the territory of any other country’, accounted for 3.2% of imports, totalling €111 billion.
Highest shares
The highest shares of Mode 3 service imports were recorded in Bulgaria (81.7%), Hungary (78.1%) and Spain (74.5%), while Greece (68.8%) reported the highest share of Mode 1 service imports, followed by Cyprus (43.8%), Sweden (37.7%) and Denmark (37.4%).
Mode 2 service imports were highest in Denmark (22.3%), France (12.1%), Lithuania (10.8%), Croatia (10.4%) and Italy (10.3%). Finally, Mode 4 service imports were highest in Cyprus (7.3%), Denmark (7.3%) and Belgium (5.4%).
According to Eurostat, Mode 3 figures for 2024 were estimated using a joint Eurostat–WTO model and inward foreign affiliates statistics for 2023, while expert judgement was used to estimate missing data. Read more here.
