A Eurostat news release on 16 October 2009 shows that Norway and Switzerland are amongst the main trading partners for the Member States of the European Union. In the period from January to July 2009, only the United States, China and Russia are more important when looking at exports and imports combined.
If looking at Norway and Switzerland as one trading bloc, only the United States and China are bigger. For exports from EU27, only the United States is more important than the Norwegian/Swiss bloc. No data from Iceland was available in this news release.
It is also worth noticing that both Norway and Switzerland separately are bigger trading partners for the EU27 than countries like Japan, South Korea, India and Brazil.
Click here to read the Eurostat news release.