Balance of trade in services with the rest of the world
- Eurostat dataset
- bop_its6_det
- Reference period
- 2025
- Unit of measure
- million euro
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2025): 335 550 million euro.
- Highest value: Spain at 113 480 million euro; lowest: Germany at -73 519 million euro.
- Cross-country mean 10 648 million euro, standard deviation 27 670, coefficient of variation 259.9% across 37 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2014→2025: +110.7% on a constant panel of 37 countries.
How does Europe perform in cross-border services trade? Eurostat dataset bop_its6_det reports balance of trade in services with the rest of the world for 37 reporting countries, with 2025 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 335 550 million euro. Services now account for roughly a third of European external trade but are absent from customs statistics.
The five highest values in 2025 are recorded by Spain (113 480), Türkiye (55 502), France (51 915), Netherlands (44 788), Poland (39 346), all expressed in million euro. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Germany (-73 519), Switzerland (-16 292), Belgium (-13 241), Sweden (-10 759), Norway (-9 178). while the median country reports 4 138 million euro against a mean of 10 648 million euro.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 27 670 million euro, giving a coefficient of variation of 259.9%. 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 2014 and 2025 the summed value across the 37 countries reporting in both periods moved by +110.7%. The largest relative increases are observed in Sweden (+1802.2%), Albania (+1284.1%), Lithuania (+473.2%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Ireland (-1115.6%), Belgium (-346.2%), Switzerland (-254.5%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
This indicator has no normatively preferred direction; its analytical value lies in the structure of the distribution and in how national positions move relative to each other over time. 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 bop_its6_det ('International trade in services (since 2010) (BPM6)'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-04-16. Filter dimensions: currency=MIO_EUR; bop_item=S; stk_flow=BAL; partner=WRL_REST. Unit of measure: million euro. Reference period: 2025. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (37 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.