Automotive industry in the European union and its competitiveness in the world

Abstract

Over the last decade, the automotive industry has been one of the fastest growing branches of manufacturing. It became one of the most crucial industries in the European Union, but it also suffered significant structural and territorial transfers. Therefore, it seems crucial to test the competitiveness of the national automotive industries, analyse the long-term trends in Europe, put them into a global perspective, draft probable changes in the near future, and warn against the looming threats. The article uses methods of statistical analysis of long-term development of revealed symmetric comparative advantage index to search for continuous trends shaping the EU automobile production. It indicates the transfers of competitiveness from most of the traditional West European car producers in favour of the new EU member states, but also from the USA and Canada in favour of the new fast-growing developing countries and emerging markets. In the conclusion, authors provide a brief outline of the European Commission's response to these changes in form of the CARS 2020 Action Plan.

Competitiveness of the European Automobile Industry in the Global Context

“…Following the methods of Dalum et al (1998), we tested the stability of the achieved comparative advantages over time to identify countries, where a signifi cant strengthening of competitiveness has been recorded, countries, where the automobile industry achieved stable results over the period of time (1995 -2015), and countries, whose automobile industry is losing competitiveness in the world marketplace (see Figure 7, vertical axis) (Vošta -Kocourek 2015).…”