Current Account

The EU Current Account is part of the balance of payments. It records goods, services, primary income and secondary income between EU residents and non-residents. It excludes trade inside the EU.

Eurostat compiles the EU total from national central banks and statistics offices plus EU institutions. Goods use customs records, services surveys, primary income banking data, and secondary income administrative sources. There is no sample survey.

Quarterly series start in 1999 and monthly series in 2008. Positive is a surplus and negative is a deficit. No threshold applies to the EU total. The +6 percent and -4 percent alert levels use a 3-year average and apply to Member States only.

Member States send quarterly data 82 days after quarter-end, 85 days for non-euro members. Monthly data are due 44 days after month-end. The first quarterly estimate appears 7 weeks after the quarter ends. The full dataset follows 3 months and a week after.

Monthly data appear within 7 weeks, a limited set about 51 days after month-end. Dates come from an advance calendar in Europe/Luxembourg time. Releases are free online at 11:00 CET and emailed to subscribed journalists. First estimates are provisional and revised with later data.

Revisions usually reach back 4 years with no final vintage. Major revisions are announced in advance with analysis of their impact. Each release also shows the capital balance, the financial account, a euro-area table, partner and national splits, and the balance as % of GDP.

The balance is the sum of 4 parts, each its own credits minus debits.

• Goods: merchandise changing ownership plus non-monetary gold and net merchanting. Values are free-on-board, with freight and insurance under services.
• Services: manufacturing, repairs, transport, travel, construction, insurance, finance, intellectual property charges, telecom and information, other business, cultural and government services.
• Primary income: pay for cross-border workers plus investment income such as interest, dividends and reinvested earnings, plus rent and taxes on production.
• Secondary income: one-sided current transfers, split into government and other sectors, including social benefits, cooperation aid and workers remittances.

The 11 January 2023 release for Q3 2022 shows the mechanism. The EU ran a seasonally adjusted deficit of 90.2 bn euros, or 2.3% of GDP. That followed a 40.3 bn deficit in Q2 2022 and a 74.3 bn surplus in Q3 2021. Goods drove the fall to minus 82.5 bn on surging energy import values.

Services stayed positive at 19.0 bn. Primary income was minus 7.0 bn and secondary income minus 19.7 bn.

Partners diverged: surplus with the United Kingdom of 57.0 bn, deficits with China of 69.8 bn and Russia of 24.4 bn. Germany held a 19.0 bn surplus while France ran a 20.4 bn deficit. Later data revised the deficit to 80.4 bn, or 2.0% of GDP. The yearly surplus fell to 6.4 bn after 412.7 bn in 2021 before rebounding to 475.8 bn in 2024.

1. Scope: Record every resident and non-resident transaction on an accruals basis at market prices in millions of euros.
2. Balances: For each item subtract debits from credits. A positive result is a surplus and a negative result is a deficit. Here credits of 1248.1 bn minus debits of 1338.3 bn give minus 90.2 bn.
3. Sum: Add the 4 balances. CA equals G plus S plus IN1 plus IN2. Minus 82.5 plus 19.0 plus minus 7.0 plus minus 19.7 equals minus 90.2 bn.
4. EU aggregate: Combine Member States transactions with outsiders and add EU institutions. Exclude flows inside the EU.
5. Seasonal presentation: Adjust headline current and capital figures for calendar, seasonal and working-day effects directly on the EU total. Publish partner and national tables without seasonal adjustment.
6. Identity check: Double-entry bookkeeping balances the accounts. FA minus CA minus KA minus EO equals zero. EO is net errors and omissions.