Comparing the first semester of 2019 with the first semester of 2020, the value of EU imports of face masks grew dramatically, from €800 million to €14 billion; an increase of 1800%, as Eurostat reports.
In EU, Luxembourg, with a government policy of nationwide distribution of face masks, had by far the highest per capita imports of face masks at €121 per person.
Belgium, Germany and France were the only other countries with imports above €50 per person. In contrast, imports were below €10 per person in Cyprus, Poland, Sweden, Croatia, Greece and Bulgaria.
China was the main EU partner for the import of face masks, supplying 92% of face masks in the first semester of 2020, up by 30 percentage points compared to the first semester 2019.
With the exception of Hong Kong, the other top-6 EU import partners all lost market share. In the first semester of 2020, only Vietnam and Hong Kong supplied more than 1% of total EU face mask imports. The United Kingdom, Turkey and Tunisia all had a share of 0.7%.
