Ukraine becomes leading EU trade partner among Eastern Partnership countries

Statistics showed that Ukraine was both the leading destination for European Union exports among EU eastern partners, and leading source of EU imports from the partners in 2014.

As the 4th Eastern Partnership summit is to take place on May 21 and 22 in Latvia's Riga, the EU statistical office Eurostat on Wednesday issued selected data concerning the eastern partners of the EU.

Among the Eastern partner countries, Ukraine registered 17.1 billion euros (20 billion U.S. dollars) exports from the EU in 2014, 52 percent of total EU exports to the eastern partners. And Ukraine's export to the EU in 2014 was 13.8 billion euros, closely followed by Azerbaijan.

EU exports of goods to the eastern partner countries are led by manufactured goods, which accounted for more than three-quarters of total exports. Conversely, EU imports from the Eastern Partners were dominated by primary goods, representing around 70 percent of total EU imports from these countries.

"It should be noted that Azerbaijan accounted for 84 percent of EU energy imports from the Eastern Partnership countries," said the Eurostat data.

The largest EU surpluses with the eastern partners in 2014 were recorded with Belarus by 4 billion euros and Ukraine by 3.4 billion euros.

According to the data, Germany, Italy and Poland were the largest EU traders with the eastern partners in 2014.

The Eastern Partnership was launched in 2009, as a joint initiative between the EU and six Eastern European and South Caucasus partner countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. Endit