EU Industrial Output Is Where It Was Four Years Ago

Four years, no growth

Industrial production covers mining, manufacturing, and electricity and gas supply. Measured against a 2021 base of 100, EU output in 2025 stood at 100.4.

Four years in which European industry produced, in aggregate, the same quantity it produced at the start.

Germany

Germany records 92.3. The Union's largest industrial economy is producing roughly 8% less than it did in 2021.

That single figure carries most of the EU aggregate. Germany's industrial sector is large enough that its contraction offsets growth across much of the rest of the Union, which is why the EU figure has barely moved while fifteen Member States are above their 2021 level.

German industry entered this period with an energy-intensive manufacturing base and a gas supply reorganised abruptly after 2022. It also sits at 19.4% of gross value added in manufacturing — high, but no longer the highest in the Union, as the manufacturing study on this site records.

The growth at the top

Denmark records 128.9, the highest in the Union, and Ireland 122.4.

Both figures should be read with the composition in mind. Danish industrial growth is concentrated in pharmaceuticals, and Irish output is dominated by pharmaceutical and medical manufacturing operated by foreign-owned firms — the same activity that distorts Irish GDP and Irish manufacturing share elsewhere on this site.

Neither index describes a broad industrial expansion. Both describe one sector growing very fast inside a small economy.

Poland at 112.8 is the case with the more ordinary explanation, a large industrial economy growing from an established base. Malta at 116.4 is a micro-economy where, as in Ireland and Denmark, a handful of plants can move the national index — which is what the limitation on small economies below sets out.

The contraction at the bottom

Belgium records 90.4, Luxembourg 91.3, Estonia 91.4 and Germany 92.3.

Belgium and Luxembourg are both energy-intensive relative to their size, with chemicals and steel respectively. Estonia's contraction follows the loss of Russian-facing trade and the reorganisation of its energy system.

What the index cannot tell you

An index of production measures quantity, not value or profitability. A country can produce the same volume at much lower margins, or shift towards higher-value output while producing less of it.

Nor does it show employment. Industrial output can be maintained with fewer workers, and the manufacturing employment picture is a separate question from the one this index answers.

What it does establish is that the aggregate figure of 100.4 is not a story of stability. It is fifteen Member States above their 2021 level and twelve below it, with Germany the fourth deepest of the twelve, averaging out through the aggregate's weights to no change — and that is not the same thing as stability in any one of them, for a Union whose industrial policy is written at European level.