Economy-wide material flows: European countries required more materials between 2000 and 2007

The national accounts provide detailed information about monetary flows through economies – but only economy-wide material flow accounts (EW-MFA) can provide information about the physical flows of materials. Using EW-MFA data, a better understanding of the physical materials needed in economies can be obtained. Typically we observe that as economies grow, more materials such as energy, construction materials, and metals are needed, but hopefully the rate of increase is less than that of GDP, a phenomena known as 'decoupling'. This Statistics in Focus marks the first publication of EW-MFA by Eurostat.