Scope for Policymaking in a Globalised Economy: The Case of Car Assembly in Belgium

The spatial organisation of the automobile production in Europe has been changing quite rapidly over the last decade. This change has been strongly affected by the enlargement of the European Union towards Central and Eastern Europe (Layan and Lung, 1995). The search by the car industry for new peripheries in new member states thereby threatens the former peripheries. Belgium is particularly concerned by this reorganisation as the country cannot be considered to be in the core of Europe’s car industry. It does not house important decision-making powers in the industry, nor does it hold important design, R&D or production activities that invoke a higher-order and diversified type of know-how. As the industry is dominated by the four ‘screwdriver plants’ for cars that are highly dependent on foreign headquarters,1 Lung attributes Belgium with a peripheral status in the automobile industry (Lung, 2002). The fact that Belgium recently lost its longstanding status as largest car assembler per capita in the world to Slovakia is testimony to this redistribution of the division of labour within the European car industry.