High-technology share of total exports
- Eurostat dataset
- htec_si_exp4
- Reference period
- 2022
- Unit of measure
- % of total exports
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2022): 17.3 % of total exports.
- Highest value: Ireland at 42.5 % of total exports; lowest: Norway at 0.94 % of total exports.
- Cross-country mean 11.7 % of total exports, standard deviation 8.36, coefficient of variation 71.6% across 30 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2011→2022: +5.2% on a constant panel of 30 countries.
How technology-intensive is the European export basket? Eurostat dataset htec_si_exp4 reports high-technology share of total exports for 30 reporting countries, with 2022 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 17.3 % of total exports. The high-tech export share is a structural indicator: it moves slowly and reflects accumulated innovation capacity.
The five highest values in 2022 are recorded by Ireland (42.5), Malta (31.1), Switzerland (19.6), Netherlands (19.4), Czechia (19.2), all expressed in % of total exports. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Norway (0.94), Iceland (4.47), Greece (4.97), Cyprus (5.02), Portugal (5.18). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 45.17, while the median country reports 8.79 % of total exports against a mean of 11.7 % of total exports.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 8.36 % of total exports, giving a coefficient of variation of 71.6%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2011 and 2022 the summed value across the 30 countries reporting in both periods moved by +5.2%. The largest relative increases are observed in Ireland (+100.0%), Belgium (+95.2%), Poland (+77.8%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Luxembourg (-78.7%), Cyprus (-66.1%), Norway (-57.7%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Higher values are the policy-preferred direction for this indicator, so the countries listed at the bottom of the distribution mark the effective size of the European gap: closing it to the level of the fifth-ranked country would require the lowest performer to move by 18.2 % of total exports. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset htec_si_exp4 ('High-tech exports - Exports of high technology products as a share of total exports (from 2007, SITC Rev. 4)'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2024-01-31. Filter dimensions: unit=PC. Unit of measure: % of total exports. Reference period: 2022. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (30 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.