ABSTRACT
A central objective of recent industrial polices across Europe (at regional, national and European levels) has arguably been the promotion of the activities of both ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ based transnational firms. This has come via two routes: first, the dash to attract inward investment from the rest of the world, to bring foreign transnationals into the EU; and second the desire to build so-called ‘Euro-champions’ through the 1992 Single Market Programme, with these Euro-firms supposedly then capable of competing with US and Japanese firms (Ramsay, 1992). Indeed, it can be argued that the aim of completing the Single Market has come in response to vigorous lobbying from the leaders of European-based transnationals such as Volvo and Phillips who have been eager to exploit the added flexibility it will bring them (see Bellak, 1997), suggesting that the European agenda of integrating markets has actually been the agenda of the elites controlling decision-making within transnationals. This faith in Euro-champions – and the decisions of elites within them – has rested on a mistaken distinction between ‘European’ and ‘non-European’ transnationals (Ramsay, 1992). Furthermore, the push to attract inward investment has gained momentum with governments and regions scrambling to attract jobs as unemployment rates across Europe have soared, most recently because EU governments have imposed severe monetary and fiscal policies in an attempt to meet the Maastricht criteria for membership of the imminent European Monetary Union (EMU).
