Twenty-one of thirty-five European countries imported more electricity than they exported in 2024. Their governments rarely say so. The wires tell a different story.
Ministers across Europe describe their power systems in the language of national sovereignty: homegrown, independent, secure. The grid that actually delivers electricity to those countries is increasingly continental.
The UK is the cleanest illustration. In 2010 its interconnector capacity was 2.5 GW. Today it is 9.8 GW, with a government strategy targeting 18 GW by 2030. Net imports have risen roughly thirteen-fold across the same window.
Twenty-one European countries imported more electricity than they exported in 2024. For some, the imbalance is small. For others — Italy at 16% of demand, Hungary at 24%, Lithuania at 46%, Luxembourg at 83% — it is the structural foundation of the system.
The investigation that follows separates two patterns the political rhetoric tends to conflate: balancing markets, which use interconnection as designed, and structural import dependence, which uses interconnection to paper over a domestic shortfall.
A clear belt of structural importers runs through the centre and south of Europe — Italy, Hungary, Croatia, the Baltic states, Belgium, Luxembourg. The exporters are concentrated at the periphery: France, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Czechia, Bulgaria.
Hover any country to see the figures and the rhetoric the government attaches to them.
In 2024 France exported a record 90 TWh net — the world's largest single-country net export figure for electricity, achieved in a year when nuclear output recovered to roughly its long-run average after the 2022 corrosion crisis.
Three of France's four largest customers — the UK, Italy and Belgium — appear in the top ten of net importers. The link is not coincidence.
At 51 TWh net, Italy imported about as much electricity in 2024 as Belgium consumed in total. Italy's chronic 15–18% structural dependence has held for two decades; it was a net importer in nearly every hour of 2024 except a handful in December.
The new 1,200 MW Piedmont–Savoy HVDC link with France took total Italy–France exchange capacity to 4,450 MW.
The closure of Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland on 15 April 2023 — a combined 4 GW of nuclear baseload — moved Germany from a typical +20 to +50 TWh annual exporter to a 26 TWh net importer in 2024.
Domestic output fell. The interconnectors absorbed the difference. The political position remained that Germany was decarbonising on its own terms.
Each panel below shows one country across an entire year. Columns are days from January to December; rows are hours from midnight to 23:00. Each cell is coloured by net flow in that hour: warm = importing, cool = exporting.
This view, to my knowledge, has not appeared in mainstream editorial form before.
These are the structurally dependent. Lithuania's domestic generation covered just 44% of demand in 2023 on Ember's figures. The carpet is not occasionally orange. It is orange.
These are the structural exporters — and the cooling pattern shows the rhythm: French nuclear is steady year-round, Norwegian and Swedish hydro deepens through the winter as reservoirs fill, Czech baseload coal and nuclear push outward in continuous pulses.
Their carpets are mottled — alternating warm and cool with weather and the day–night cycle. These are the systems using interconnection as the single market intends: trading both directions, hour by hour, weather front by weather front. The political language of dependence does not apply to them.
The distinction between this texture and the uniform orange of the structural importers is the central editorial point.
Total cross-border physical interconnection capacity in Europe has roughly doubled since 2010, from around 50 GW to roughly 110 GW. The European Commission's official position is that this lowers system costs by €20 to €43 billion annually and enables higher renewables penetration.
It also locks in interdependence. Both can be true.
The shutdown of the Ignalina nuclear plant — a condition of EU accession — removed roughly 70% of Lithuania's domestic generation overnight. The country has not closed the gap. Its 46% net import share in 2024 is the second-highest in Europe.
On 8 February 2025 the Baltic states left BRELL and synchronised with continental Europe via LitPol Link. The dependence simply transferred direction.
Stress corrosion cracking in EDF's nuclear fleet pushed output to 279 TWh — the lowest since 1988, against a 10-year average of 395 TWh. France, the continent's structural backstop, was a net importer for the first time in 40-plus years.
UK net imports briefly went negative. Italian wholesale prices set records. The question of what happens when the supplier needs help has not gone away.
The closure of Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland on 15 April 2023 retired 4 GW of baseload. Germany became a 22 TWh net importer that year; 26 TWh in 2024.
Doel 1, Doel 2 and Tihange 1 are scheduled to close across 2025. Elia, the Belgian TSO, projects that imports will cover up to 58% on average and 94% at peak of the resulting capacity gap. The De Wever government reversed the phase-out in February 2025, with plans for up to 8 GW of new nuclear by mid-century — a position that admits, implicitly, that the trajectory is not sustainable.
Vertical axis: net imports as a share of demand. Horizontal axis: the share of hours in the year the country was a net importer. Three clusters emerge.
Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Luxembourg. These countries are net importers in the great majority of hours, and their annual import share is large. Their political language — secure, sovereign, homegrown — runs furthest from the data.
The Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Germany now. These flip direction frequently. Their carpets in scene 3 are mottled. They are using interconnection as the single market designed it: as a hedge, not as a backbone of supply.
France, Sweden, Norway, Czechia, Bulgaria, Spain. They export in most hours of the year. France in particular is the system's spare capacity — a position that survived the 2022 corrosion crisis and is structurally hard to replace.
ACER reports that the EU spent €4.3 billion on remedial actions to manage congestion in 2024, that average cross-zonal capacity availability was 54% against the legally mandated 70% target, and that limited capacity in the Core region alone cost €580 million in foregone welfare. The single market is not even fully integrated — and the capacity that exists is being used to paper over national imbalances rather than to enable cross-border efficiency.
Calling this energy independence is not honest. Calling it integrated interdependence would be — and would change the political conversation.
Europe's grid is not 35 national grids loosely connected. It is one continental system whose national authorities have rhetorical incentives to deny that fact.