ABSTRACT
169Industrial policy, once a key pillar of European integration, has been outlawed during the past decades of neoliberal reign. As part of recent European Union (EU) crisis-management plans however, industrial policy seems to be reviving. The European Commission’s Communication, For a European Industrial Renaissance, issued in 2014 is telling here, announcing that “a strong industrial base will be of key importance for Europe’s economic recovery and competitiveness” (European Commission, 2014). To overcome the crisis and make the EU future proof, the goal is to reverse the process of deindustrialization, reflected in the transfer of manufacturing capacity to China and other emerging markets by boosting industrial competitiveness. The target is to increase the manufacturing share of the EU’s GDP from its current 15 percent to 20 percent by 2020. Manufacturing, which accounts for 40 percent of all EU exports, is argued to be the main driver for “innovation, jobs, growth and wealth” (ibid.).
