Office for National Statistics data for UK exports to and imports from the EU27 are shown in the following table.
UK goods exports to the EU UK services exports to the EU UK goods imports from the EU UK services imports from the EU 1998 99,336 — 105,048 — 1999 101,537 30,783 109,622 32,510 2000 112,459 33,718 117,644 35,356 2001 114,406 36,850 126,973 37,686 2002 114,737 38,306 136,931 39,715 2003 111,286 41,871 137,404 43,014 2004 111,650 46,037 142,523 45,517 2005 121,486 49,741 158,163 50,423 2006 152,357 53,828 183,748 52,579 2007 127,813 60,078 169,799 55,193 2008 141,136 66,740 180,322 57,954
For technical reasons associated with EU enlargement, consistent figures are not available for trade in 1997 or for services trade in 1998. For some periods, trade in goods figures were affected by transactions associated with missing trader VAT fraud, most notably in the first half of 2006.
No figures are available for the impact of the Rotterdam/Antwerp effect on statistics on UK trade with the Netherlands and Belgium compared with other countries; nor is it obvious how this affects statistics on trade with other EU countries compared with the rest of the world. HM Revenue and Customs regularly analyse asymmetries between UK trade statistics and those produced by other countries: in particular, in December 2005 they published a report called “Analysis of Asymmetries in intra-community trade statistics with particular regard to the impact of the Rotterdam and Antwerp effects” which can be found at:
www.uktradeinfo.com/pagecontent/documents/edicom_rotterdam_effect_2005.pdf
The ONS and HMRC keep the methodologies underlying trade statistics under review.