The EU imports 98% of the gas and oil it consumes from abroad.

Omissions

• The 98% figure is the EU's import dependency for oil and petroleum products (2024); it is NOT the figure for natural gas, which was 87.6% in 2025.
• The claim merges two different metrics (oil dependency ~98% and gas dependency ~88%) into a single number, which overstates the gas component.
• The broader context is that the EU's OVERALL energy import dependency rate is far lower (57.3% in 2024), because imported fossil fuels are only part of total energy consumption; the claim is only true when narrowed to the fossil-fuel sub-category of oil and gas.

Sources

• PrimaryEurostat — Natural gas supply statistics (Statistics Explained)In 2025, the EU's natural gas import dependency rate was 87.6%.
• PrimaryCouncil of the European Union (Consilium) — 'Where does the EU get its oil from?'EU imports almost all its crude oil (around 97% in 2024). In 2025, the EU imported around 435 million tonnes (Mt) of crude oil, worth over €212 billion.
• SecondaryBruegel — 'Dependence on fossil fuels, not on the United States, is Europe's worry'In 2024, the EU was 98 percent dependent on imports for oil and petroleum products. See Eurostat, 'Complete energy balances', version of 6 March 2026.