Eurostat reported that total industrial production grew by +1.5% in the EU and +1.7% in the Euro-zone compared to April. For the EU this all but reversed the sharp fall in April but the Euro-zone had a larger reduction, so their stronger growth was further away from reversing this. However, this is largely driven by Ireland where output grew by +12.4% in May, almost balancing the decline of -12.5% in April.
Compared to May 2024, total industrial production (IP) increased by +3.4% in the EU and by +3.7% for the Euro-zone; this contrasts with a rise of just +0.2% for both areas when comparing April 2025 with a year earlier.
As noted above, all of these trends are heavily influenced by the situation in Ireland where both industrial production and the broader GDP figures are affected by the presence of the headquarters operations of large multi-national companies. This is because of royalty payments made by these companies operations across the EU to their Irish company which means that the profit is made in the country with the lowest tax rates. This is illustrated by the trends for IP over a year earlier which had growth rates of +10%, +38%, +52%, +15% and +40% respectively over the first five months of 2025.
Some of the “noise” in the data can be eliminated by using rolling 3-month trends; in this case the latest period is March to May 2025 which we can compare with December 2024 to February 2025. On this basis, total IP grew by +1.7% in the EU and +2.0% in the Euro-zone; however, this is likely to fall next month as March marked an upturn and will move below the line in this comparison with the June figures.
Although manufacturing makes up the bulk of IP, the latter also includes the extraction, energy production and utilities industries. Unfortunately, they don’t provide a breakdown of IP that includes manufacturing that we can compare directly with the UK data noted above.
The only level of breakdown in the Eurostat bulletin that matches the UK data is the analysis for capital (or investment) goods. Compared to April, output by this sub-sector rose by +2.0% in the EU and by +2.7% for the Euro-zone. Looking back over 12 months to May 2024, output of capital goods increased by +4.4% in the EU and +4.5% for the Euro-zone – in both cases, this was the second fastest among the sub-sectors behind only non-durable consumer goods.
Staying with the 12-month comparison, 16 of the EU Member States saw an increase in total IP, 1 (Cyprus) was unchanged and the other 10 registered a reduction. Apart from Ireland (see above), the strongest growth was in Finland (+5.9%), Sweden (+5.0%) and Romania (+4.6%) while the largest percentage reductions were in Belgium (-7.3%), Bulgaria (-6.5%) and Denmark (-4.2%). However, it is worth noting that, compared to a year ago, output fell in France (-1.0%) and Italy (-0.9%) but grew in Germany (+1.9%) and Spain (+1.7%).
You can get the full details from the Eurostat News Release which can be downloaded from their website at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/news/euro-indicators (15 July) or requested from MTA.