Three EU Countries Import More Than Their Entire Economies Produce

The other half of trade openness

The international trade category on this site reports exports as a share of GDP and finds that the Union's four largest economies are all among its six least open. Imports were worth checking rather than assuming, and they give a sharper result: the same four economies are the four lowest in the Union.

Across the 27 Member States, imports of goods and services equalled 46.1% of combined GDP in 2025.

Above 100%

Luxembourg imports 170.6% of its GDP, Malta 111.3% and Ireland 109.3%.

As with exports, ratios above 100% are arithmetically sound. Imports are counted at their full value while GDP counts only value added, so goods arriving, being lightly processed and leaving again enter the import figure at full price and the GDP figure at the margin.

Ireland's position has a second cause specific to it. Irish pharmaceutical and technology operations import inputs and intellectual property services at very large values, and the same activity that inflates Irish GDP inflates Irish imports.

The largest economies at the bottom

Italy records 30.2%, Spain 32.6%, France 34.2% and Germany 37.9%. All four are below the EU figure of 46.1%.

The explanation is the one that applies to exports. A large economy contains more of its own supply chain, so a smaller share of what it consumes crosses a border. An Italian firm buying components from another Italian firm records no import; a Slovak firm buying the same components from Austria does.

Import dependence measured this way is therefore close to an inverse measure of economic size, and it should not be read as a statement about self-sufficiency or resilience.

What it does not measure

Nothing here identifies what is imported or from whom.

A country importing 30% of GDP entirely in critical inputs from a single supplier is more exposed than one importing 60% from many suppliers across many product categories. The concentration of trade, not its volume, is what determines vulnerability, and this indicator measures only volume.

The energy import dependency study on this site measures the concentration question for one specific commodity, and produces a completely different ranking: Malta at 98.4% and Estonia at 4.6%, with Italy above the EU average rather than below it.

Why the EU row is what it is

The 46.1% figure is the sum of the 27 national values, so imports from other Member States are counted in it. It describes how much cross-border buying the Union's economies do, not how much the Union buys from outside itself.

Roughly three fifths of Member States' goods exports go to other Member States, as the intra-EU study on this site reports. That study measures exports, not imports, but every sale from one Member State to another is also an import for the buyer, so trade inside the single market is part of this figure too. What the Union buys from outside itself is therefore smaller than this figure suggests, and this dataset cannot say by how much.