Policy issues affecting the European electrical and electronic industries are dealt with at director’s level within Orgalime's Committee of the Electrical and Electronic Industries (CEEI).
CEEI, represents the views of its national trade association members in the electrical and electronic engineering fields as defined by chapters 29.7; 30; 31; 32 and 33 of NACE Rev1:
EE Sectors by NACE codes
The electrical, electronics, ICT and instrument industry is amongst the largest industrial sectors in Europe. The value of production in 2009 was about €470 billion and employment stood at an estimated 2.9 million.
As the recession set in during 2009, the volume of production contracted by 17 percent. Demand on the EU27 internal market was particularly low, whereas some export markets in Asia, especially China, showed better demand. Extra-EU exports were however unable to compensate for the steep fall in demand in Europe.
Based on the official data for Orgalime industries in EU27 available so far for early 2010, we see the volume of production has levelled off. As a matter of fact the level or production has increased slightly since early autumn 2009.
The results from various business surveys have improved lately. The Commission’s monthly business survey shows that most of EU27 Orgalime sectors still consider order stocks well below average, but that the inflow of new orders has increased slightly. Inventories of finished goods have been reduced strongly over the last couple of quarters and will therefore not affect future production negatively. Other surveys, such as purchasing managers’ index or forward looking surveys such as IFO expectations, also show considerably stronger outcome than last year.
The financial sector across the globe is however not functioning properly. In many countries, credit is still tight, as banks are forced to consolidate their balance sheets, while not necessarily shunning the financial investments which led up to the crisis. Investment will therefore continue to be negatively affected. On top of this capacity utilisation in industry is still low. These factors among others will have a negative impact on investment goods industry that dominates our industry.
However, economic policies are clearly accommodating as interest rates are still low.
Some factors are in place for a recovery, but any future expansion 2010 will be rather limited and start from a very low level.
Orgalime expects a modest increase in volume of production in 2010 or by about 1.5 percent.
Foreign trade in terms of exports is expected to increase by 2.5 percent. Demand outside EU is clearly expanding at present, especially in Asia and South America.
It is also estimated that employment will contract rather sharply in 2010, by some 2.5 percent.
Low utilisation of capacity and limited access to credit negatively affect fixed investment. We expect that fixed investment will contract in our industry by 3.5 percent in 2010.
Economic shocks that our industry have experienced earlier as the oil shocks in the 1970s, financial turbulence in early 1990s and the burst of the IT-bubble some ten years ago show that the road to pre-level crisis could be bumpy and also take some time or about 4 years on average. There are reasons to believe that this will also be the case with the most recent crisis.
Key technical or internal market issues are monitored closely by the Technical Co-ordination Committee (TCC) and various task forces, in close co-operation with a number of European product sector associations, so as to reinforce the joint advocacy potential of the industry on regulatory and standardisation issues of common interest.
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