ABSTRACT
The expansion and deepening of global value chains have contributed to a significant re-configuration of the regional and international divisions of labour in Europe and Euro-Med, with important consequences for the changing character of industrial structure and geographies. The delocalization of western European manufacturing industries and the offshoring and near-shoring of assembly production to east central Europe began as early as the 1970s, led by textile and clothing manufacturers and buyers. The model of global economic organization that emerged was essentially an input-output chain disaggregated and distributed across an ever broader Euro-Med region, coordinated by a lead-firm sourcing from a distributed and complex system of input suppliers and manufacturers. Post-socialist enterprises and their workers offered to western European manufacturers and retailers an opportunity to recapture some competitive advantage by extending their production systems into low wage labour markets.
