Central and East European Industry in an Enlarged European Union: Restructuring, Specialisation and Catching-up

The Central and East European Accession Countries (ACs) have gone through a dramatic process of structural adjustment in which their integration into trade and production systems with the EU, fostered especially by inflows of FDI, has played a major role. Using detailed national statistics on production, employment and FDI (at 2-digit NACE level), as well as Eurostat data on manufacturing industry trade, this paper analyses the emerging patterns of ACs’ industrial specialisation and identifies sectors where productivity catch-up has been most pronounced. This paper attempts to outline the emerging position of the ACs’ industries (and their individual sectors) within the enlarged EU. While EU accession will not bring any additional, dramatic changes to industry (owing to the high degree of integration in this area which already exists), there are some sectors that will be affected by differentiated patterns of growth and cost structures.