The Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat) reported that UK exports of goods to the EU fell by 59.5% in January 2021 compared to December 2020, in a report that was published on 18 March.
The British National Institute of Statistics had announced on 12 March that there had been a 40.7% fall (see EUROPE 12677/16).
A difference in methodology is behind this discrepancy. For Eurostat, trade between Member States and EU trade with non-Member States is not calculated using the same method. Cross-border trade flows were therefore calculated according to the intra-EU method until December 2020, before being calculated differently from January onwards.
As trade in the direction of the EU to the UK, the fall was 27.4% in January, according to Eurostat. This figure is close to the figure of 28% identified by the British institute.
EU trade balance. Furthermore, the report reveals that European exports fell by 10.8% in January 2021, compared to the same month the previous year. Imports fell by 16.9%. The EU ends up with a positive trade balance of €8.4 billion for January 2021 – this was not the case last year (-€2.2 billion in January 2020).
See the report: https://bit.ly/3eQuOkL (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)