Who was the €90 billion for?

The premise

If you see the €90 billion only as a high price, you miss that the people who paid it, the places it went and the things it kept running are not the same.

That’s a condition, not a verdict. This piece doesn’t say the money was wasted, or that it could have been avoided.

Not a single molecule more

In her State of the Union address on 16 September, the president of the European Commission said:

“Since the start of the conflict, imported fossil fuels have cost us an additional €90 billion, without a single molecule of energy added.”

Europe paid more and got no more energy for it. That raises a simple question: who was that money for? Who paid it, where did it go, what did it keep going, and what is left?

Some scale first. The EU imported about €340 billion of fossil fuels in 2025. But neither the speech nor the documents released that week explain how the €90 billion was worked out. The figure whose method we can see dates from April. In it, the Commission put the extra cost of the opening 52 days after the conflict began and the Strait of Hormuz closed at €24 billion. A footnote gives the method: assuming the EU imported the same volumes, it would have paid roughly €51 billion at pre-crisis prices, against €75 billion at actual prices. It holds quantities fixed and compares prices only. By the end of July, the Commission’s running total had reached €62 billion.

So in this piece, the €90 billion is the Commission president’s figure. The arithmetic uses the numbers whose method is public.

Same gas, three different bills

Start with the people who got the bills.

In Belgium, consumer prices in August were 3.97% higher than a year earlier. Energy alone was up 16.47%: gas by 24.9%, diesel by 33.4%, heating oil by 12.1% and electricity by 7.8%, according to Statbel. Across the euro area, energy prices were 14.3% higher than a year before, in Eurostat’s flash estimate.

But households using the same gas did not all get the same bill at the same time. Figures from CREG, Belgium’s energy regulator, show three very different outcomes.

Contract	What happened
Fixed price, signed by March	Unaffected by April’s price changes. About 1.3 million households for electricity, 807,000 for gas
Fixed price, signed in April	Annual bill about 7% higher for electricity and about 24% higher for gas
Social tariff	Gas was due to rise 33.1% for July to September; a cap held the rise to 15%

The social tariff is the maximum price charged to protected households. The cap was not a new crisis measure: it is a rule that has been on the books since a 2020 ministerial order. CREG notes that wholesale gas rose from €32.29 per MWh in February to €46.56 in May, and attributes the rise to the war in the Middle East that began in March.

Same summer, same gas. The type of contract decided when the shock arrived, and how hard it hit.

What households didn’t pay didn’t vanish

Households were not alone in picking up the bill. By early May, EU governments had announced €14.5 billion of support, or 0.07% of EU GDP. The Commission estimated that the cost would rise to €38.6 billion if the measures ran to the end of the year.

It also noted that three-quarters of that support was untargeted, mostly cuts to fuel excise and other indirect taxes. The remaining quarter went to specific groups, such as low-income households or the transport sector.

A tax cut keeps pump prices down. It doesn’t make the higher cost disappear. What drivers don’t pay, the government doesn’t collect. Part of the bill moved to taxpayers.

Whose fuel did the money buy?

Now the other end. Using Eurostat trade data, we added up EU imports from outside the bloc of crude oil, refined oil products, LNG, pipeline gas and coal. The latest month available is July.

From March to July 2026, those imports cost €199.9 billion, against €152.2 billion in the same months of 2025: €47.7 billion more. This is a different kind of number from the €90 billion or the €24 billion. It is the change in what was actually paid, so it mixes higher prices with changes in volume. The figures can’t be added together or subtracted from one another.

Split by fuel, the increase is lopsided.

Fuel	Change from a year earlier
Crude oil	€40 billion more
Oil products	€5.2 billion more
Pipeline gas	€4.1 billion more
Coal	€0.6 billion more
LNG	€2.3 billion less

Most of the extra money went on crude oil. Crude imports rose about 5% by weight, while the price per tonne rose about 39%. Households felt the shock through gas and diesel. On the import side, crude was where the bill grew most.

Where did that crude come from? By country of origin, spending on US crude rose by €10.3 billion, Norwegian crude by €7 billion and Kazakh crude by €4.8 billion. Libya, Brazil and Guyana each added about €3 billion, and Saudi Arabia €2 billion.

The Gulf, where the crisis began, did not move in one direction. Across all five fuels, imports from Qatar fell by €1.7 billion, Kuwait by €1.1 billion, Iraq by €0.8 billion and the UAE by €0.6 billion. Imports from Saudi Arabia rose by €2.9 billion. We did not look into why.

One caveat matters here. Trade statistics record where a fuel was produced. They don’t record where the company that was paid is based. So this piece says Europe spent more on US crude, not that the money went to the United States. Norway, for its part, is in Europe but outside the EU. Some of the increase may have stayed in Europe as taxes or distribution margins, but we found no official figure for how much.

What the money kept going

The €90 billion did buy something. The fuel arrived, and it was used.

Eurostat’s monthly supply figures for March to June show EU gas consumption almost unchanged from a year earlier, at 92.9 billion cubic metres against 93.4 billion. Deliveries of oil products fell 3.8%. That comparison isn’t adjusted for weather or economic activity, so we don’t claim the money is what kept things running. The narrower point stands: prices rose sharply, and use barely fell.

The fuel came in during those months and was burned during those months. Whatever it provided was used up then.

What is left

Fuel leaves nothing behind once it’s burned. Next winter it has to be bought again. If the same shock comes from the same place, the bill will arrive the same way.

That is the point behind the Commission president’s phrase about not a single molecule added. What the same money would have left behind if it had gone into power plants or grids instead is a hypothetical. We don’t attempt to calculate it.

One distinction is worth making here. What this piece sets out is the problem: fuel is used up, it has to be bought again from outside, and the same shock travels the same route back. Which remedy shrinks that problem — electrification, storage, using less, spreading supply, something else — is not something this piece picks. Tie one remedy to the problem and anyone who objects to that remedy hears the problem itself being denied.

Put the pieces together and this is the picture. European households paid the extra cost, partly through their taxes. Most of the increase in the import bill was the price of crude oil, and the biggest increases were for US, Norwegian and Kazakh crude. The fuel it bought was used within a season. And once it was burned, no new capacity was left behind.

What this piece does not claim

• That the €90 billion was wasted, or could have been avoided
• That supplier countries or companies set out to profit
• That electrification would make Europe energy-independent
• That any particular power source is the answer
• What should be done — this piece sets out the problem and doesn’t pick a remedy

What we checked, and what we couldn’t

Checked

• €90 billion — the Commission president’s State of the Union address, 16 September 2026. It gives no period, baseline or method
• €24 billion — footnote to Commission communication COM(2026) 370: first 52 days, same volumes assumed, about €51 billion at pre-crisis prices against about €75 billion at actual prices. Same document: about €340 billion of fossil fuel imports in 2025
• €62 billion — DG Energy: additional spending from March 2026 to the end of July
• Belgian inflation in August — 3.97% overall, energy 16.47%, gas 24.9%, diesel 33.4%, heating oil 12.1%, electricity 7.8% (Statbel)
• Euro area energy inflation of 14.3% in August (Eurostat flash estimate)
• Bills by contract type — CREG’s April 2026 findings and its note on third-quarter 2026 social tariffs
• Member state measures of €14.5 billion (as of 4 May), €38.6 billion if extended to year-end, three-quarters untargeted — DG ECFIN spring forecast
• Import values by fuel and country of origin — our own calculation from Eurostat Comext raw data (March–July 2026 against March–July 2025, imports from outside the EU)
• Gas consumption and oil product deliveries — our own calculation from Eurostat monthly supply statistics (March–June 2026 against March–June 2025)

Couldn’t check

• How the €90 billion was calculated, and whether it uses the same method as the €24 billion
• Who actually received the money
• How much stayed inside Europe
• Whether the imported fuel caused consumption to hold up
• Who covers the difference when the social tariff is capped
• The Belgian federal government’s 2026 measures
• Why imports from some countries rose and others fell