Insights into industry concentration in the EU

In 2023, industry concentration displayed a wide range of variation across sectors at EU level. Industry concentration in this article is based on the EuroGroups Register (EGR) data and measures the extent to which an industry is dominated by 1 or more businesses. In this case, it focuses on employment concentration at the 4 largest multinational enterprise groups by statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE).

The 5 economic activities with the highest industry concentration in 2023 were recorded in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (20.8% of employment concentrated at the 4 largest enterprise groups), mining and quarrying (12.9%), water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities (11.7%), transportation and storage (9.8%) and financial and insurance activities (8.7%).

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Source dataset: egr_conc

In contrast, activities in sectors such as construction, accommodation and food service activities and education recorded much lower concentration levels, around or below 2% in 2023.

For more information

• Statistics Explained article on EuroGroups Register and industry concentration
• Experimental statistics webpage on EuroGroups register and industry concentration
• Thematic section on statistical business registers (SBR)
• Database on statistical business registers (SBR) 
• Thematic section on structural business statistics (SBS)
• Database on structural business statistics (SBS)

Methodological notes

• Eurostat has used the possibilities of the EuroGroups Register (EGR) to produce experimental statistics to measure industry concentration by showing how multinational enterprise groups in the EU and European Free Trade Association operate. The data and the information on the structure of the groups take into account the links between the enterprises of the same group, as they do not compete on a certain industry but rather increase the concentration level, working towards group level profit maximization.
• As information available for net turnover in the EGR is not available with sufficient coverage yet, data on employment have been used as a proxy. The correlation between employment and net turnover differs: it is high for manufacturing or water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities, and relatively weaker for mining and quarrying and electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply.

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