ABSTRACT
Footwear, as one of the most labour-intensive industries, has been among the first sectors to be exposed to the processes of delocalization and global restructuring. The process of internationalization, however, occurred with different intensity in different regions, thus leading to a wide diversity of forms of delocalization, where the links between firms and regions were embedded in different historical, political, institutional and socio-economic environments. Nevertheless, we can say that delocalization followed a general pattern, in which the European footwear industry initially, in the 1970s-1980s, shifted production from the more developed, northern European, to the less developed, southern European, countries. More distant locations such as Brazil, China, Vietnam, India and Mediterranean African countries constituted the next wave of delocalization destinations. As far as the CEECs were concerned, their significance grew markedly, mainly through OPT in the 1980s after the political changes and the establishment of market economies in the 1990s. As a result, currently the largest share of footwear production of these countries is exported to the EU market.
