Italy is not Greece, rather Germany. According to a study by the Edison Foundation, on Eurostat data from 2007, the macro-regions of the Northeast and Northwest of Italy are in the first two places in the ranking of number of employees in the European manufacturing industry. The first NUTS1 macro-region (the first type of Eurostat subdivision which includes 271 statistical territorial units) by number of workers is Northwest Italy, with 1,68 million workers, followed by Northeast Italy with 1,35 million. Only in third place is Rhineland-Westphalia (Dusseldorf and Cologne) with 1,24 million.
The first non-Italian or German macro-region in industry is Eastern Spain (which includes Catalonia), followed by Central Italy and the Bassin Parisien (Burgundy and Normandy). To find a UK manufacturing macro-region instead you have to go down to 26th place in the ranking, with North West Manchester and Liverpool.
I Northwest Italy it stands out in Europe for the number of employees in the textile-clothing, paper-publishing, rubber-plastic, metal products and other means of transport sectors. While the Center of Italy it is first in leather-shoes and third in furniture. The Nordest instead it is first in wood, in products based on non-metallic minerals and in furniture. There Germany dominates at the macro-regional level in motor vehicles and electrical equipment thanks to large groups such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Siemens.
But in industrial machines the Northwest, thanks to Lombardy, and the Northeast, with Emilia-Romagna and Veneto, compete on an equal footing with Baden-Württemberg. They know it well the manufacturers of packaging machines in the Stuttgart area who are now struggling to keep up with those from Emilia. However, a bitter note remains: in terms of country, Germany is much higher up than Italy, which suffers from imbalances with the non-industrialized South as much as the Center and the North.
