4.7 Global impacts from EU consumption

This briefing looks at the global impacts associated with EU product and service consumption. These environmental and climate impacts (such as climate change, resource depletion and air pollution) are aggregated into a single score.

These impacts might occur within or outside the EU, depending on where production takes place for the products and services consumed within the bloc. The aggregated impact score can be separated into individual impact scores for specific consumption areas like housing, food, household goods and personal mobility.

Key policies

The EU’s Eighth Environment Action Programme calls for a significant decrease in ‘the Union’s material and consumption footprints to bring them into planetary boundaries as soon as possible, including through the introduction of Union 2030 reduction targets’. This objective is non-binding and not quantified in the Action Programme.

Past trends (10-15 years)

Trends/developments show a mixed picture

Trends in the global impacts from EU consumption from 2010 to 2022 indicate relative stability as the 2022 value is only 4% higher than the 2010 value. In the same period, the EU's gross domestic product grew by more than 18%. As such, the EU has managed to achieve modest relative decoupling of environmental impacts from its economic growth. This means that economic growth in the EU does not proportionally increase its harm to the global environment.

On the other hand, there was no consistent reduction in the aggregated environmental impact from the EU consumption in the past, although improvements in specific environmental impacts like climate change are apparent. Moreover, data from 2021 and 2022 show an acceleration in environmental impacts linked to EU consumption. Consumption in the areas of housing, food and household goods are mainly responsible for the EU’s total impact, together accounting for more than 70% of the aggregated impacts.

Regardless of the observed trends, the absolute level of the EU’s consumption-based impacts is higher than our planet is able to cope with. It is more than three times higher than the EU’s per capita share of planetary boundaries.

Outlook (10-15 years)

Deteriorating trends/developments are expected to dominate

The main factors driving developments in the global impacts from EU consumption are increasing affluence on the one hand — leading to increasing demand for goods and services, and increasing environmental impacts from their production — and improvements in production networks on the other, such as efficiency gains and the energy system decarbonisation which are mitigating environmental impacts.

Economic growth in the EU is expected to continue, driving the consumption-based impacts upwards, while the effects of ongoing environmental improvements in production networks are uncertain and depend on the full implementation of the European Green Deal — though this is in the context of decarbonisation efforts that are expected to continue. Potential reductions in the EU consumption-based impacts also exist if consumption patterns become more sustainable (e.g. with changing diets) but past trends show no evidence for the kinds of large-scale shifts that would be required.

Prospects of meeting policy targets 2030/2050

2030: Largely not on track to meet targets

Although past trends show that the global impacts from the EU’s consumption are relatively stable, there are no signs of any substantial reduction, especially given the consistent increase in recent years. Current projections indicate that the consumption-based impacts are likely to further increase by 2030.

The fact that the EU's per capita consumption-based global impacts are over three times higher than what's required to live within planetary boundaries suggests that it is very unlikely that the EU's consumption footprint will be brought into line with these boundaries any time soon. In particular, planetary boundaries related to climate change, freshwater ecotoxicity, impacts from particulate matter and resource depletion are the main areas responsible for Europe’s unsustainability. As such, policies to address these areas need to be fully implemented and expedited.

2050: No specific policy targets

Robustness

The data used in this briefing are the results of modelling in Exiobase, a Multi-Regional Environmentally Extended Supply-Use Table (MR-SUT) and Input-Output Table (MR-IOT). As such, the data are subject to modelling uncertainty and should be interpreted with care. A full description of the modelling methodology can be found at this EEA website.

Charts/maps

Figure 1. Weighted impacts from EU consumption in a single score (million points), divided into consumption domains for the EU-27, 2010-2022