Kraus, K. (2015). The role of industry in the EU : making manufacturing work [Master Thesis, Technische Universität Wien; Diplomatische Akademie Wien]. reposiTUm. https://doi.org/10.34726/hss.2015.34063
The European Commission announced its ambitious plan of reindustrialising the EU and thus increasing the share of industry to 20% of EU wide GDP. The key research question is how to sustainably attain this goal. Short-sighted government intervention to protect jobs and bail out inefficient operations leads to even deeper structural problems in the long run and is detrimental to competitiveness, growth and thus the prosperity of a region. A mix of input data, such as labour market data, and output data, such as the level of industry of GDP, were used to evaluate the development of industry in the EU over time. Another question was if the current policies are effective at providing a competitive framework for companies and at the same time allowing workers to participate. The results were that job preservation is not a compelling industrial strategy and as a result only high value-added processes should qualify for support. In order to achieve this aim it was suggested to reconsider the allocation of subsidies and to support promising emerging industries. It can be concluded that the European Commission's ambitious goal of a 20% share of industry in EU wide GDP is not within reach and it most likely will not be achieved. However, it sends the right signal to firms that are looking for some confidence when investing.