The Politics of Industrial Privatisation in Western Europe: An Overview

Privatisation may not exactly have ‘swept the world’—the claim of a British Finance Minister1-but it is certainly true that throughout Western Europe governments are pursuing, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, policies under the banner of ‘privatisation’. The most committed have been the governments of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and of Jacques Chirac in France. But coalition governments in Belgium, Italy, West Germany and the Netherlands, and even Socialistled governments in Spain, Austria and Sweden have sold or intend to sell at least some State assets.