ENERGY DEPENDENCY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND ROMANIA

This paper analyses the energy dependency rate in the European Union and Romania during 2010-2021. The quantitative research method is used to make a statistical analysis to establish the trend towards increasing or decreasing the energy dependency rate. Thus, analysing the official Eurostat data, we can see an increasing trend of the energy dependency rate between 2010 and 2019, both in the European Union and in Romania. And in 2020 is recorded the sharpest decrease in the entire period under analysis. Therefore, the hypothesis that the sharp decrease in the energy dependency rate is due to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is verified, which is fully confirmed.