Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-23-Speech-3-230"
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"en.20050223.17.3-230"2
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".
Mr President, now that the quantitative import controls for the textile and clothing industry have been abolished, there is great concern about the future of the textile and clothing industry in the EU. It is worth putting this into an historical perspective. In 1962, as a young economics student, I wrote an essay on the marked decline of the Swedish textile and clothing industry after the Second World War. At that time, the reason for this was the stiff competition from low-wage countries such as Germany and Italy.
I found that structural change in the sector had been successful. Labour had moved to better paid jobs in the engineering industry, and what remained of the textile and clothing industry had moved on to more advanced products. No unemployment had resulted, and the trade unions had played an active part in the structural change. The whole episode stood out as a tale with a happy ending from both an economic and a social point of view.
This process continued during the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the surviving Swedish textile and clothing enterprises moved a large proportion of their production to low-wage countries such as Finland and, in time, Portugal, but kept their design and marketing operations in Sweden. Special products such as men’s suits and car upholstery continued to be made in Sweden, and were profitable. Nowadays, the thought of Finland – ‘Nokialand’ – now so advanced, still being considered a low-wage country in the late 1960s is laughable. Today, very little remains of Swedish textile and clothing production, but large Swedish clothing chains employ large numbers of people in designing and marketing clothing worldwide.
We have had ten years to adapt. For the EU to become a leading, dynamic, knowledge-based region, its socioeconomic system must succeed in compensating for a decline in the textile and clothing industry by means of a transition to more sophisticated textile and clothing products and strong growth in other sectors. If it does not, the Lisbon agenda will show itself to have been a soap bubble waiting to burst."@en1
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