Manufacturing Is a Smaller Part of France's Economy Than of Bulgaria's

Where the Union still makes things

Manufacturing's share of gross value added measures how much of an economy's output comes from making physical goods, as against services, construction, agriculture and energy.

For the European Union as a whole the answer in 2025 was 15.8%. Roughly one euro of value added in six.

The Irish figure, and why it comes first

Ireland tops the ranking at 30.8%, nearly double the EU share, and the number should be read with care rather than at face value.

Ireland hosts the European operations of a number of large pharmaceutical and technology firms, and output booked to those operations enters Irish value added. The resulting manufacturing share describes where profits are recorded more than where work is done. Irish manufacturing employment is not twice the European norm.

Stating that is not a reason to exclude the figure. It is a reason to read the second and third positions as the top of the ranking of ordinary industrial economies.

The central European belt

Slovenia records 21.1% and Czechia 20.8%. Slovakia follows at 17.5% and Hungary at 17.1%.

Germany, the economy most associated with European manufacturing, records 19.4% — behind Slovenia, Czechia and Denmark. It remains by far the Union's largest manufacturer in absolute terms, and in proportion to its own economy it is one industrial country among several.

The pattern is a belt running from Poland through Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary into Slovenia and Austria, tied into German supply chains. Most of them sell the bulk of their goods exports inside the Union rather than outside it, though Slovenia is a conspicuous exception; the intra-EU trade study on this site has the ranking.

France

France records 11.2%, the same share as Greece, and the two sit joint fourth from the bottom of the Union. The three below them are Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg, all of them micro-states.

France manufactures a smaller share of its output than Bulgaria at 13.1%, Romania at 14.6% or Portugal at 12.8%, and well under Italy at 16.7%.

It is not alone down there, though, and that is the part usually missed. Spain and the Netherlands both record 11.7% and Latvia 11.6% — half a point or less above France and Greece, which puts five Member States in the same band rather than one exception. France is still the case that carries weight, because it is the Union's second-largest economy and because its industrial position is a recurring subject of its own politics, but the low-share group is a group.

What the indicator does not say

A share is not a size. France's manufacturing sector is one of the largest in the Union in absolute terms; it is small relative to the French economy, which has a correspondingly large services sector.

Nor does a falling share mean a shrinking industry. An economy whose services grow faster than its factories will show a declining manufacturing share while manufacturing output rises. This measure ranks composition, not industrial health.