La restructuration de la géographie de l'industrie automobile en Europe dans les années 2000

The aim of this paper is to provide a quantitative and macroeconomic picture of the new geography of the automobile industry in Europe. Since the integration of 10 new members in the European Union in 2004, the firms (carmakers and suppliers) have changed their location strategies and, now, they consider the whole Europe as a full integrated space. Thanks to data on employment, production, trade exchanges and foreign control of affiliated firms, we take the measure of the relocation process between East and West. In the first part, we study the motor vehicle sector. We show the sharp increase of the European eastern countries but also the specific role of Germany. Nevertheless, we must not forget that motor vehicle production is still a key economic activity for some large traditional countries of Western Europe. In the second part, we study the auto parts sector. The growth of central and eastern countries is more impressive in particular if we consider employment. This growth is mainly driven by foreign firms who export a large part of their local production. Nevertheless, the relocation process is selective (basically, work-intensive activities) and we observe the creation of embedded networks between East and West. We conclude with a summary of the main results and we call upon new works with microeconomic data.