How long until Europe runs out?

A good harvest does not make a country independent. France produces far more grain than it uses, yet relies heavily on imported nitrogen fertiliser. Even a country with a grain surplus has to think about where its next harvest’s inputs will come from.

So how long could a European country keep going if a major supplier stopped delivering? That is the question behind the Sovereign Stack, our map of the systems that keep 31 countries running. It brings together official data on essentials such as food, energy, medicines and water, alongside measures of defence, public finances and skills.

Choose natural gas, crude oil or food and fertiliser, then press play. Click a country to see the data behind its result. For medicines, chips and critical materials, the map shows scores without a countdown: we do not have the stock figures needed to calculate one.

Show as a listCountryFirst to run outDayIrelandEnergy1LuxembourgEnergy1SloveniaEnergy1GreeceEnergy12MaltaEnergy34BelgiumEnergy41EstoniaCrude oil72PortugalEnergy74PolandEnergy76BulgariaCrude oil80CyprusCrude oil83LatviaCrude oil89SpainEnergy98SlovakiaCrude oil108CroatiaCrude oil122GermanyEnergy123HungaryCrude oil125LithuaniaEnergy141DenmarkCrude oil150AustriaCrude oil166SwedenCrude oil190Czech RepublicCrude oil204RomaniaCrude oil211FinlandCrude oil240ItalyFood252NetherlandsCrude oil318FranceEnergy330NorwayHolds—UkraineHolds—SwitzerlandNo data—United KingdomNo data—

Pick what Europe loses and press play. Each country drains until its first affected layer runs out; click one for the countdown and the companies hiring to fix it. Open the full map →

The clock is a simplified estimate of how long stocks could cover a shortfall after the largest supplier disappears, assuming no replacement supplies and unchanged consumption. In a real disruption, governments, businesses and households would respond. Read the result as a way to compare exposure under those assumptions, rather than a date when a country would stop functioning.

Start with gas. In Eurostat’s 2024 trade data, Russia accounted for 74% of Hungary’s identified gas imports and 76% of Slovakia’s. For crude oil, the shares were higher still: 87% and 86%. These are shares of imports, not of everything the countries consume. The records identify the first trading partner, which can include a transit country.

Elsewhere, Norway appears as the largest reported gas partner for Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Finland and France. Buying from a NATO ally changes the political risk. It still leaves a practical question: how easily could those deliveries be replaced if they were interrupted?

Reserves help, but even those need careful reading. In September 2026, Finland reported 178 days of emergency oil stocks and Denmark 63. Finland’s figure is measured against net imports; Denmark’s against consumption. Put the numbers side by side without that detail and the comparison becomes misleading.

The FAO’s 2021–23 averages show France producing about 1.8 times its domestic cereal use. Lithuania produced 2.9 times its use. The Netherlands, by contrast, produced enough to cover 8%. Here, “use” includes animal feed and industrial uses as well as food.

France shows why it helps to look beyond the harvest. Its nitrogen fertiliser production accounted for about 11% of production plus imports in the FAO’s 2024 data; the production figure is an FAO estimate. That is a substantial reliance on imports for a country with a cereal surplus. Grain already in storage and the inputs needed for future harvests are different parts of food security.

Germany was the largest recorded partner for medicine imports in 12 of the 31 countries in 2024, according to Eurostat’s Comext trade data. That makes it an important distribution point. It does not mean all those medicines were made in Germany: trade records can tell us where a shipment came from without identifying the factory behind it.

Chip imports show another kind of concentration. A single partner accounted for 79% of Ireland’s integrated-circuit import value in 2024, compared with 20% for Germany’s largest partner. Those percentages describe the value of imports, not the number of chips used or made in either country. They help us ask where supply is concentrated; they cannot tell us how quickly a particular production line would run short.

Trade also needs somewhere to arrive. In Eurostat’s 2025 figures, one statistical port accounted for 96% of Romania’s seaborne cargo tonnage. Denmark’s largest accounted for 10%. A statistical port can group several physical sites, but the contrast still shows how differently freight can be spread across a country’s ports.

Water crosses borders too. Over 2015–24, an average of 97% of Hungary’s renewable freshwater came from inflows from neighbouring countries. That describes where the water originates, not the source of every litre used. It is a dependency that a national boundary on a map can easily conceal.

We group the data into 11 areas, called layers on the map. Each country’s overall score comes from its lowest-scoring layer. We chose that rule so a strong result in one area would not hide a weak result elsewhere. It is our way of organising the evidence, and it has not been validated as a predictor of how countries perform in a crisis.

The scoring choices matter. Ireland’s zero on the security layer reflects, among other things, the weight we give NATO membership and defence spending. It does not mean Ireland has no defence capability.

Coverage varies too. We can score the UK on only 5 of the 11 layers, Ukraine on 6, Switzerland on 9 and Norway on 10, because several source datasets cover EU members only. A missing figure means we lack evidence. The methodology sets out the sources, assumptions and corrections so you can judge the results for yourself.

We built this on a jobs board because these systems need people to run and improve them. The map lets you open a country, choose an area and see the employers linked to it, along with their open roles.

If you work in energy, manufacturing or defence, start with a country you know. Look at where it depends on outside supply, then explore who is working in that area. It is another way to find a role: begin with a problem you want to work on.