Dutch TTF gas futures are up 60% since the Strait of Hormuz closed. European storage is at its lowest seasonal level in years — 46 bcm at end of February, against 60 bcm a year ago and 77 bcm in 2024. Goldman Sachs has revised eurozone forecasts. Oxford Economics estimates an inflation impact of 0.3–0.5 percentage points, with growth slipping to around 1%.
Every major institution is now publishing a eurozone number. None of them tells you where it lands.
The map below classifies EU regions along two dimensions: employment in gas-intensive manufacturing (chemicals, ceramics, basic metals) and each country’s electricity dependence on natural gas. Together they capture two transmission channels — industrial costs and power prices — producing four types of regional exposure.
28 regions are 𝐃𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞-𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝, facing pressure through both channels. Northern Spain stands out: Asturias and País Vasco place over 2.7% of their workforce in gas-intensive sectors against Spain’s 28.8% grid gas dependency. The Italian industrial arc from Lombardia through Veneto and Friuli shows the same pattern, combining dense manufacturing with Italy’s 32% grid dependency. Bulgarian regions also appear here, less because of absolute industrial scale than because employment is heavily concentrated in metals and chemicals relative to their size.
75 regions are 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲-𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 but partially buffered on the power side. This is largely the German story. Rheinhessen-Pfalz and Düsseldorf have some of the highest gas-intensive employment shares in Europe — above 4.4% — yet Germany’s grid gas dependency has fallen to 18% over 2020-24, below the EU average of 24.4%. The Energiewende has weakened the power-price transmission channel even where industrial exposure remains high.
The Scandinavian picture shows the opposite: structural insulation. Denmark, Sweden and Finland combine very low gas dependency (Denmark 10%, Sweden 6%) with diversified employment structures. Some northern Swedish regions remain industrially exposed, but the electricity channel is largely absent because hydro and wind dominate the grid.
47 regions are 𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐝-𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 — less industrially concentrated but highly vulnerable through electricity prices. Greece is the clearest case, with 62% gas dependency in the power system. Here the shock hits households and SMEs through electricity bills rather than industrial margins.
The spatial pattern carries an important policy implication. The regions facing the sharpest double exposure are neither the EU’s richest nor its most subsidised. Spain’s industrial north, Portugal’s Centro, Croatia’s Slavonia — these sit outside both the core innovation corridor and the main geography of the cohesion policy.