In 2024 the EU imported energy from the United States worth €58.8 billion-about US$66.4 billion when converted at 2025 exchange rates, according to Eurostat figures cited by “Welt am Sonntag”.
In a customs agreement the EU signed with President Donald Trump over the summer, the bloc pledged to purchase US$750 billion of energy from the U.S. between 2026 and 2028. That would amount to roughly US$250 billion per year, a figure that would have to be roughly four times the current 2025 import value.
The deal is now on hold. The U.S. Supreme Court has vetoed the agreement, and Trump has announced higher tariffs on a different legal basis. The European Parliament has postponed ratification pending a resolution of the issue but remains committed to the deal in principle.
Hans‑Wilhelm Schiffer, a professor of energy economics at RWTH Aachen, doubts that the EU can meet the US$750 billion target. “I can’t see how, given these numbers, it will be possible to reach a total of US$750 billion by 2028-especially since the EU’s energy import value from the U.S. has fallen compared to 2024” he explained, basing his calculations on Eurostat data.
The EU’s U.S. energy purchases last year comprised €2.6 billion in coal imports, €32 billion in oil, and €24.2 billion in LNG. The United States accounted for 52.5 % of the EU’s LNG supply, dwarfing Russia’s 16 % share, which paid €7.3 billion for its deliveries.
While the EU has decided to stop all Russian energy imports from 1 November 2027, which could give U.S. suppliers a larger market share, replacing Russian volumes entirely would still not make meeting the US$250 billion annual pledge much easier.
Schiffer warned that even with full substitution by U.S. supplies, the gap between the EU’s ambition and reality would remain huge. “With no sustainable increase in the EU’s energy import volumes or a significant rise in international energy prices anticipated until 2028, the U.S. share of EU energy imports would need to climb from 19.4 % in 2025 to over 50 % on average between 2026 and 2028 to satisfy the agreement’s aspirations” he said.
