The narrowing of the euro area current account balance in 2025

Lorenz Emter, Michael Fidora, Fausto Pastoris and Martin Schmitz

Economic Bulletin Boxes, 2026, vol. 4

Abstract: This box examines the narrowing of the euro area current account surplus from 2.7% of GDP in 2024 to 1.7% in 2025. The decline was driven mainly by services trade and income flows and particularly by developments vis-à-vis the United States and China. For the United States, this reflected the role of US multinational enterprises, whose euro area affiliates supported goods exports but generated larger services and income deficits. Imports from China grew, especially in machinery and manufactured goods. AI-related goods had only a limited direct effect on the goods balance, but it is likely that rising AI adoption boosted imports of digital services. From a saving and investment perspective, the lower surplus reflected reduced net lending by non-financial corporations, owing to both lower saving and higher domestic investment needs. Overall, the euro area current account surplus is expected to remain below its 2024 level over the medium term. JEL Classification: E22, F23, F43, F62

Keywords: Balance of payments; current account; MNEs; tariffs; trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
Note: 491968
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ecb.europa.eu//press/economic-bulletin ... 8~de66a3786d.en.html (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecb:ecbbox:2026:0004:8

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Bulletin Boxes from European Central Bank 60640 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Official Publications ().