Euro Zone Deficit Sets Record

The euro zone of 16 European countries recorded an external trade deficit of 32.1 billion euros ($40.5 billion) in 2008, the largest trade deficit since the euro was introduced in 1999.

The deficit for 2008 compared with a surplus of 15.8 billion euros in 2007. European officials blamed rising costs of energy imports and declining exports during the global financial crisis.

For the same reasons, the external trade deficit of the larger, 27-member European Union also swelled to 241.3 billion euros in 2008 from 192.4 billion in 2007, Eurostat, the EU statistics bureau, said in a preliminary estimate. For the first 11 months of 2008, the EU energy deficit increased to 339.5 billion euros, compared with 243.1 billion euros in the same period of 2007.

The EU's year-over-year exports to the U.S. and Japan dropped, by 5 percent and 4 percent respectively, from January to November. The largest increases in EU exports were recorded for exports to Brazil and Russia, up by 26 and 20 percent on yearly basis. EU exports to China rose by 10 percent.