European Union Industry Research Articles

The EU as a Political Determinant of Global Health: The Case of Research and Development Incentives for Orphan Medicines and Biotechnology

Context: The European Union (EU) governs global health through its constituent laws, institutions, actors, and policies. However, it is unclear whether or how these political factors interact to position the EU as a political determinant of global health. Methods: The authors conduct a case study of the political factors influencing the adoption of the EU's Biotechnology Directive 98/44/EC and Orphan Medicines Regulation 141/2000. Findings: The European Commission (EC) generally framed both of its proposals around economical and biomedical paradigms aligned with the needs of the EU's industry and patients, whereas the European Parliament (EP) contested some of these frames and proposed amendments supporting global access to medical products. The political factors influencing the adoption (in the Biotechnology Directive) or rejection (in the Orphan Regulation) of the EP's amendments include the complementarity between the EP and EC proposals, the EP's power in the intra- and interinstitutional negotiating process, the existence and support of civil society, and the alignment with member state priorities in the Council. Conclusions: In the late 1990s, the EU was an internally fragmented and politicized player concerning global health matters. These political factors should be considered for a coherent post-2022 EU strategy on global health.

EU Industrial Policy and Convergent Development in EU Peripheries: An Assessment of the ‘Important Project of Common European Interest’ (IPCEI) Template

AbstractIndustrial policy has been enjoying a significant comeback. In the European Union (EU), ‘important projects of common European interest’ (IPCEIs) have become a template for a new, value chain‐oriented EU industrial policy. But what does this mean for convergence between ‘peripheral’ and ‘core’ member states? Based on the understanding that convergent development requires opportunities for ‘learning in production’ to accumulate the technological capabilities that are necessary for economic upgrading within value chains, this article advances an in‐depth analysis of the implementation of this EU industrial policy template. It argues that IPCEIs have so far offered peripheral countries and their firms few opportunities for learning in production within value chains. In this light, there is a risk that IPCEIs might have limited or even detrimental effects on the prospects for convergence within the EU. The article concludes by considering how this template could be made more conducive to convergent development.

The European Union's Global Gateway: An institutional and economic overview

AbstractInfrastructure investments are the material way of turning sustainable development goals into practice. Climate action requires renewable energy plants, power grids and electric‐vehicle charging infrastructure, in the same way that health requires hospitals, education requires schools or connectivity requires ports. In this context, the Global Gateway can help meet the European Union (EU)'s international pledges, such as on climate finance, by supporting partner countries in the implementation of their sustainable development agendas. It can enable EU industry to enter new growing markets, a win for EU industrial policy. On top of this, it can help economic development in the EU's partner countries, providing an invaluable foreign policy dividend for the EU. In geopolitical terms, the Global Gateway can help the EU better position itself in the global infrastructure and connectivity race. Rule‐based cooperation focussed on a clear set of priorities represents an attractive alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative in several partner countries, starting in Africa. By scaling up cooperation on economic and social infrastructure projects, the EU thus has an opportunity to promote its values and vision of sustainability in a way that is tangible and long‐lasting.

Coping practices and the spatial dimension of authority design

AbstractFrontline implementers develop coping practices to deal with implementation burdens. Unfortunately, we have only limited knowledge of how widespread and systematic these practices are applied. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the enforcement activities carried out in the context of the European Union Industrial Emission Directive, relying on a quantitative data set that summarizes the information from more than 2000 inspection reports published by the German state Baden‐Württemberg. Our analysis reveals that inspectors tend to give priority to sites that (1) are closer and easier to reach and (2) that pose only a small risk to their environment. These findings indicate that implementers are primarily guided by concerns over the quantitative rather than the qualitative aspects of their work. These insights highlight that public authorities' spatial location is a crucial, yet still unexplored factor in the study of policy implementation.

It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over: Interest-Group Influence in Policy Implementation

Current research on interest-group influence in the European Union tends to focus on just one stage of the policy cycle, being agenda setting, the legislative process or (some aspects) of the implementation stage. We argue that this bifurcation of the research agenda is a serious shortcoming, as lobby dynamics may vary throughout different consecutive policymaking stages. As a consequence, lobby gains or losses in the legislative stage can be overturned in the implementation. This research note therefore explores how the influence of interest organisations travels across different stages of the policy cycle, most importantly between the legislative stage and the implementation stage. First, we observe that as policymaking is a continuous rather than a static process, also lobbying tends to stretch beyond the legislative stage. Second, we argue that the specific characteristics of the implementation vis-à-vis the legislative stage may structurally favour business and resourceful organisations over smaller groups and nongovernmental organisationss. Third, we illustrate the plausibility of our argument by means of an in-depth case study: the European Union Industrial Emissions Directive. We conclude with a call for a more integral approach to researching lobby powers throughout the policy cycle and provide a preliminary agenda for future research.

Experimental and economic evaluation of nanofiltration as a pre-treatment for added-value elements recovery from seawater desalination brines

Desalination brine mining emerges as a solution to supply raw materials to the European Union industry in a circular economy approach since valuable minerals and metals (e.g., B(III), Mg(II), Ca(II), Sc(III), V(V), In(III), Ga(III), Li(I), Mo(VI), Rb(I)) are present in seawater but in low concentrations. Brine pre-treatment is important to remove species that may impair the performance of other technologies involved and to increase recovery efficiencies. Hence, nanofiltration and calcium precipitation were proposed as pre-treatment stages. Nanofiltration was studied to separate monovalent from multivalent elements (Fonsalía desalination plant case study), while economically, it was evaluated whether it would be better to place it before (Scenario 1) or after (Scenario 2) a Ca(II) precipitation stage, considering that Ca(II) can produce scaling in membranes. Three commercial membranes were tested using synthetic brines at 30 bar. Experiments (65 % permeate recovery) showed that Fortilife XC-N and PRO-XS2 membranes presented higher Ca(II) and Mg(II) rejection than NF270. Heating the brine for Ca(II) precipitation jeopardizes the economic feasibility of the project. Scenario 1 was the best configuration since it presented lower total levelized cost (≈1.6 €/m3 inlet, without heating the brine for Ca(II) removal). In such scenario, PRO-XS2 reported the best selectivity between monovalent and multivalent elements.

Air compressor load forecasting using artificial neural network

Air compressor systems are responsible for approximately 10% of the electricity consumed in United States and European Union industry. As many researches have proven the effectiveness of using Artificial Neural Network in air compressor performance prediction, there is still a need to forecast the air compressor electrical load profile. The objective of this study is to predict compressed air systems' electrical load profile, which is valuable to industry practitioners as well as software providers in developing better practice and tools for load management and look-ahead scheduling programs. Two artificial neural networks, Two-Layer Feed-Forward Neural Network and Long Short-Term Memory were used to predict an air compressors electrical load. Compressors with three different control mechanisms are evaluated with a total number of 11,874 observations. The forecasts were validated using out-of-sample datasets with 5-fold cross-validation. Models produced average coefficient of determination values from 0.24 to 0.94, average root-mean-square errors from 0.05 kW - 5.83 kW, and mean absolute scaled errors from 0.20 to 1.33. The results indicate that both artificial neural networks yield good results for compressors using variable speed drive (average R2 = 0.8 and no naïve forecasting), only the long short-term memory model gives acceptable results for compressors using on/off control (average R2 = 0.82 and no naïve forecasting), and no satisfactory results are obtained for load/unload type air compressors (models constituting naïve forecasting).

Conventional and alternative nitrocellulose stabilisers used in gun propellants

The European Union industry must adapt to the requirements of the REACH regulations, which aim to improve human health and to protect the environment by using less toxic chemicals. The technology for producing nitrocellulose propellants utilises stabilisers that bond volatile products with autocatalytic properties of nitroester degradation. During this process, N-nitroso derivatives are formed, which exhibit toxic/carcinogenic properties. Moreover, some of the impurities found in stabilisers are characterised by toxic properties (e.g. in diphenylamine). In recent years, intensive research has been carried out on alternative nitrocellulose stabilisers with properties similar to or better than conventional stabilisers. The published studies on this subject mainly present research on chromatographic analysis, evaluation of stability using various methods and thermochemical analysis.

Estimating the waste heat recovery in the European Union Industry

Industrial processes are currently responsible for nearly 26% of European primary energy consumptions and are characterized by a multitude of energy losses. Among them, the ones that occur as heat streams rejected to the environment in the form of exhausts or effluents take place at different temperature levels. The reduction or recovery of such types of energy flows will undoubtedly contribute to the achievement of improved environmental performance as well as to reduce the overall manufacturing costs of goods. In this scenario, the current work aims at outlining the prospects of potential for industrial waste heat recovery in the European Union (EU) upon identification and quantification of primary energy consumptions among the major industrial sectors and their related waste streams and temperature levels. The paper introduces a new approach toward estimating the waste heat recovery in the European Union industry, using the Carnot efficiency in relation to the temperature levels of the processes involved. The assessment is carried out using EU statistical energy databases. The overall EU thermal energy waste is quantified at 920 TWh theoretical potential and 279 TWh Carnot potential.

Waste Heat Recovery in the EU industry and proposed new technologies

In the European Union (EU), industrial sectors use 26% of the primary energy consumption and are characterized by large amounts of energy losses in the form of waste heat at different temperature levels. Their recovery is a challenge but also an opportunity for science and business. In this study, after a brief description of the conventional Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) approaches, the novel technologies under development within the I-ThERM Horizon 2020 project are presented and assessed from an energy and market perspectives. These technologies are: heat to power conversion systems based on bottoming thermodynamic cycles (Trilateral Flash Cycle for low grade waste heat and Joule-Brayton cycle working with supercritical carbon dioxide for high temperature waste heat sources); heat recovery devices based on heat pipes (flat heat pipe for high grade radiative heat sources and condensing economizer for acidic effluents).

Ukraine and the European Union Industry: Comparative Statistical Analysis of Structural Advantages

The signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union (EU) raised the need to increase the competitiveness of domestic industry producers to the level of the EU member states. The choice of ways to improve the domestic industrial sector should be based on the results of relevant analytical assessments.
 The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative statistical analysis of key structural indicators of the industry in Ukraine and EU member states by type of industrial activity. In order to achieve this goal, a methodological approach has been developed that allows for system evaluation of industry pattern and its internal and external efficiency. Using these tools, a comparative analysis of structural advantages of the industry in Ukraine and the EU member states is conducted by share of industry in output, gross value added and exports, and by efficiency measured by share of gross value added in industry output. Similar calculations are made for all types of industrial activities.
 The results of the analysis show that Ukraine, in spite of heavy industrial potential and significant natural and human resources, in the period of analysis (2012-2015) had only 19th position among the EU member states by industrial output and the 20th position by value added in industry The pattern of the Ukrainian industry is typical for countries with economy based on primary commodities. The key problem faced by the Ukrainian industry is its low efficiency: the 28th position by share of value added in output. The above confirms that the cost structure of industrial products is dominated by material and energy components. This signals the need for further restructuring of the industrial sector in Ukraine. Optimization of the domestic industry structure has to cover all industrial sectors and subsectors. A key optimization criterion has to be the socioeconomic efficiency enhancement, which can be achieved through increasing and restructuring the gross value added, with particular emphasis on the share of gross operating profit, mixed income.

Improving substance information in USEtox® , part 1: Discussion on data and approaches for estimating freshwater ecotoxicity effect factors.

The scientific consensus model USEtox® is recommended by the European Commission as the reference model to characterize life cycle chemical emissions in terms of their potential human toxicity and freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity impacts in the context of the International Reference Life Cycle Data System Handbook and the Environmental Footprint pilot phase looking at products (PEF) and organizations (OEF). Consequently, this model has been systematically used within the PEF/OEF pilot phase by 25 European Union industry sectors, which manufacture a wide variety of consumer products. This testing phase has raised some questions regarding the derivation of and the data used for the chemical-specific freshwater ecotoxicity effect factor in USEtox. For calculating the potential freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity impacts, USEtox bases the effect factor on the chronic hazard concentration (HC50) value for a chemical calculated as the arithmetic mean of all logarithmized geometric means of species-specific chronic median lethal (or effect) concentrations (L[E]C50). We investigated the dependency of the USEtox effect factor on the selection of ecotoxicological data source and toxicological endpoints, and we found that both influence the ecotoxicity ranking of chemicals and may hence influence the conclusions of a PEF/OEF study. We furthermore compared the average measure (HC50) with other types of ecotoxicity effect indicators, such as the lowest species EC50 or no-observable-effect concentration, frequently used in regulatory risk assessment, and demonstrated how they may also influence the ecotoxicity ranking of chemicals. We acknowledge that these indicators represent different aspects of a chemical's ecotoxicity potential and discuss their pros and cons for a comparative chemical assessment as performed in life cycle assessment and in particular within the PEF/OEF context. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:3450-3462. © 2017 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC.

Production costs of the non-ferrous metals in the EU and other countries: Copper and zinc

Our study compares production costs of the non-ferrous metals (NFM) industry in the European Union (EU) and other countries in order to understand whether these costs are higher in Europe. Our analysis focuses on copper and zinc, since they are considered to be the most greatly consumed non-ferrous metals after aluminium. The countries selected for comparison depend on the metal and are based on high shares of extra-EU28 trade and/or of global installed capacity. A bottom-up approach has been followed, based on information at facility level for primary production of the two metals. The analysis includes 32 copper smelters, 34 copper refineries and 23 zinc smelters, representing 72%, 58% and 30% of global production of copper anodes, cathodes and zinc slab respectively. Taking into consideration the complex structure of the industry, costs are broken down to three components: (1) Energy, (2) Labour and other costs (salaries, consumables and other on-site costs) and (3) Credits (due to co-products). Our findings suggest that although interesting observations emerge in each of these components, overall costs compare more favourably among countries than initially thought. The EU industry does not have the highest production costs. On the contrary, especially in the case of copper refineries and zinc, it has lower production costs than most of the countries included in the study.

Evaluation of Environmental Performance Based on Proximity to Bat Associated Resource Utilization and Emission Values: A Case Study in a Steel-Making Industry

Best available techniques reference documents (BREFs) that are drawn up as required by the European Union Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) describe best available techniques (BAT) as the most effective, advanced and applicable methods, preventing emissions to the environment and providing efficient use of resources. Iron and steel industry, which causes quite significant amount of resource depletion and waste production, is one of the industries within the scope of IED. In this study; environmental performance of an integrated iron and steel plant in Turkey was evaluated by comparing its resource utilization and emission levels with the BAT associated values. To this end, a comprehensive material flow analysis was conducted, all inputs (energy, raw material, water) and outputs (products, by-products, emissions) involved in all sub-processes in the facility were determined and specific emissions and resource consumptions were calculated. In general, the studied plant’ performance against BAT associated resource utilization and emission values was within the span defined in the BREF. Concerning specific water use and the emission load to the receiving waters, the plant’s performance was pretty good. However, the plant was found to be in need of making additional efforts to reduce its dust emission load and specific energy consumption to achieve the BAT associated values. A total of 74 candidate BAT alternatives were identified and evaluated considering their adaptability to local conditions with regard to environmental benefits and technical practicability and economic feasibility. Among them, 36 alternatives were determined to be applicable BAT options for this plant to improve environmental performance and to reach BAT associated resource utilization and emission values.

Investigating the Effect of External Alliances on Innovation Behavior in the European Union Industrial Sector

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of collaboration with suppliers and lead users in new product development (NPD) on innovation behavior. Such collaborations are regarded as advanced forms of external alliances. Survey data from two hundred and fifty-two manufacturing companies were collected from the European Union. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that both suppliers’ and lead users’ collaboration in NPD significantly affected innovation behavior. Lead users’ collaboration showed higher impact on innovation behavior compared with suppliers’ collaboration.

The Requirement of New Industrial Policy to Support Polish Economy

Abstract Recently conducted public economic debates take increasingly demand to implement a new industrial policy for the economies development after the global crisis. The article takes the indicated topics presenting the genesis of the current interest in industrial policy. The analysis of economic indicators based on the results achieved by the European Union industry and in case of individual EU countries confirms the need for the application of the new industrial policy objectives, in order to increase the competitiveness of EU industry on the global economy background. Poland also has to adapt its industrial policy to these statements. Poland should focus on high-tech industry development, because then it will be able to successfully compete on the international arena and increase pace of economic growth.

The Judicial Review of the European Union Industrial Cartels

The Judicial Review of the European Union Industrial Cartels

Structural asymmetries at the roots of the eurozone crisis: what’s new for industrial policy in the EU?

In this paper, we analyze and try to measure productive and technological asymmetries between central and peripheral economies in the eurozone. We assess the effects such asymmetries would likely bring about on center–periphery divergence/convergence patterns, and derive some implications as to the design of future industrial policy at the European level. We stress that future European Union (EU) industrial policy should be regionally focused and specifically target structural changes in the periphery as the main way to favor center–periphery convergence and avoid the reappearance of past external imbalances. To this end, a wide battery of industrial policy tools should be considered ranging from subsidies and fiscal incentives to innovative firms, public financing of R&D efforts, sectoral policies, and public procurements for home-produced goods. All in all, future EU industrial policy should be much more interventionist than it currently is, and dispose of much larger funds with respect to the present setting in order to effectively pursue both short-run stabilization and long-run development goals. Keywords: Center–Periphery Structural Symmetries, EU Industrial Policy JEL Codes: E12, F15, O25, O52

Environmental cost-benefit analysis and the EU (European Union) Industrial Emissions Directive: Exploring the societal efficiency of a DeNOx retrofit at a coal-fired power plant

Aiming to reduce potentially harmful emissions to the environment, the recent European IED (Industrial Emissions Directive) requires that industrial installations are equipped with BAT (best available techniques). However, flexibility mechanisms are foreseen to avoid inefficiencies. One such derogation allows competent authorities to set less strict emission limit values if the installation and operation of BAT leads to disproportionate costs (i.e. abatement costs exceed related environmental benefits).The current paper aims to present an approach to quantify monetised environmental benefits related to reductions in air pollutant emissions in this context. The tool EcoSenseWeb is applied to the case of a DeNOx retrofit at a coal-fired power plant hypothetically located at three different sites in Europe, varying in terms of environmental conditions. Following environmental cost-benefit analysis principles, the DeNOx investment proves to be socially efficient at all sites. Costs tend to be disproportionate under certain conditions, e.g. lower operating hours per year and remote geographic locations, justifying case-specific derogations. The applicability of the methodology and the related tool in the process of granting derogations under the IED is explored, while noting practical and methodological limitations. Associated development needs are highlighted, at best to be addressed at EU (European Union) level in a harmonised way.

Convergence of EU and US Industrial Policy: “The obsession of Competitiveness”

1. Introduction Two dynamics led to a convergence in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) industrial policy views: institutional EU construction on the one hand, and a common threat from Asia’s economic ascent on the other hand. This convergence is not however a sign that the EU and the US have reached equal economic performances. But the similarities of the way they perceive industrial policy shed light on their shared perception of future economic challenges. The EU members ...