Industrial energy consumption in the European Union has been studied, the focus being on specific energy consumption of various industrial sectors. An analysis is made of the main structural factors (e.g., primary or secondary production, product types) that affect energy efficiency. The industrial sub-sectors and production processes considered are those that are most important from an energy point of view, namely, oil refining, petrochemicals, ammonia, paper, cement, and steel production. These sectors consume 18% of the primary energy in the EU. There are considerable differences between the energy efficiencies of industries in EU member states. If each sector were to apply ''best practice technology'', then potential improvements in energy efficiency in the EU would be on average 15 +/- 4% for oil refining, 21 +/- 2% for ammonia, 25 +/- 5% for paper, 13 +/- 1% for cement, and 27 +/- 3% for steel. No analysis can be made of possible improvements in the energy efficiency in the petrochemical industry because insufficient statistics are available. An improvement in the quality of international statistics is necessary to produce more reliable assessments.