Data released on Wednesday by the EU statistics office Eurostat show that most EU countries achieved the 15% target, with the exception of Slovakia (1.0%), Spain (10.8%), Poland (12.5%), Slovenia (13.8%), Belgium (14.5%) and Malta – the EU’s smallest gas consumer – which saw a 12.7% increase between August 2022 and March 2023.
In contrast, the countries where natural gas consumption fell the most were Finland (55.7%), Lithuania (40.5%) and Sweden (37.2%), while in the rest of the EU countries it fell beyond the 15% target, in some cases by more than 20%, as in the case of Estonia, Latvia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Denmark, among others.