Europe is losing its position in traditional industries (based on steel, agriculture and other primary commodities); it is caught between exporters in Asia and eastern Europe who rely on cheap labour, and the high-tech empires of Japan and the USA.
If the present crisis in industrialized countries as a cost crisis, the gravity of the situation is underestimated. In most of the high-tech industries of the future (information technology, genetic engineering, new materials), European industries are either not present or their presence is shrinking. At the same time Europe's traditional industrial base in chemical, automobiles, textiles and industrial automation is crumbling with the consequence of an inevitable confrontation with even higher unemployment that will linger longer than before.