We’ve been looking at the January 2013 statistics for a large number of EU countries for industrial and manufacturing production – and the year-on-year comparisons are, frankly, gloomy to behold.
Not all countries present the data in precisely the same way, but this is what we have found. In every case, the trend is downwards, in most cases by a large amount.
Surely no one, not even Mr Olli Rehn (see our Rehn of Error for his systemic optimism), can still believe that austerity policies across the European Union and Eurozone are working. They are having a profoundly negative impact on almost all parts of Europe, north as well as south.
Here are the data for January 2013 compared to January 2012, for 9 countries, entered into our Template of Doom:
country
manufacturing
industrial production
Finland
-7.0%
-4.8%
France
-4.6%
-3.3%
Germany
-3.0%
n/a
Greece
-2.4%
-4.8%
Ireland
-3.1%
-3.3%
Portugal
-3.4%
-1.5%
Spain
n/a
-3.6%
Sweden
-7.7%
-7.8%
United Kingdom
-3.0%
-2.9%
The most recent Eurostat figures for industrial production across the EU are for December 2012. These showed that year on year, industrial production had declined by 2.4% in the Eurozone and 2.3% in thew EU as a whole. It looks as though things have got worse in January.
Indiana Jones, we need you!
