The Diplomat in Spain

Table showing the recovery of the EU’s manufacturing industry per Member State in 2013.

Eduardo González. Madrid.

The European Commission will spread its two annual reports on European industrial competitiveness and on competitiveness within each of the Member States halfway through September. The studies carried out in 2013 presented a very alarming panorama for the Union as a whole, especially for Spain, placing it as the third country of the EU in industrial fall, only behind Cyprus and Greece.

The European commissioner for Industry and Business, Ferdinando Nelli Feroci, will reveal the main conclusions of the report in a press conference that will also offer a technical analysis of the documents, a press release and two memorials (one per report), according to information provided by the European Commission.

The European Report on Competitiveness has been published every year since 1997. Its objective is offering a quantitative assessment of the results of the Union’s industries in terms of competitiveness and revising the geopolitics contributing to the development of the companies and the factors affecting the growth of the business, such as the access to different ways of financing, the role of the public administration, the innovation, the impact and the factors of the internationalization of the small and medium enterprises, and the impact of the energy costs.

Besides, the report on competitiveness of the Member States shows the current situation of the European industry and compares the progress made in the Members States. This document is based on indicators such as investment and the access to investments, to innovation, to the energy sources, to raw materials and the access to markets, infrastructures and services. It also examines industrial policies taken at the European level and in each of the Member States. This year, the report focuses especially on the improvement of the companies’ environment through a public administration prone to growth.

The results of the reports, which serve as a tool for the elaboration of policies based on particular elements, will be discussed during the Competitiveness Council (made up of the ministers of Industry or Economy of the Member States plus the European commissioner of Competence) next 25 and 26 September.

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Spain was the third most deindustrialized country of the EU in the report of 2013

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The report of 2013 warned that the contribution of the European industry to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had fallen from 15.5 to 15.1 per cent in just one year, within the framework of a process of “deindustrialization” (in words of the European Commission) whose main factors were the increase of energy, the drop in investments, the restrictions to credit and the stagnation of the public administrations. Besides, it warned that the industrial gap between the countries was becoming bigger and that at that speed it would not be possible to reach the goal of 20 per cent of GDP for 2020.

The report of 2013 also indicated that Spain was the third country of the EU, “only behind Cyprus and Greece”, regarding the fall in industrial production since the start of the crisis, with a drop of 30 percent since 2008 (the average of the EU was of 12 per cent) and with a 13.3 of the total value added compared to the 15.3 in the Union as a whole. Experts regretted the slowness and the delay in the implementation of the reforms launched by the Government to promote the industry and they claimed the speeding-up of the initiatives to improve the business environment and the competitiveness as regards costs, in order to make the recovery possible.