Industrial & Innovation Policy

European Policy

Working Paper
EN
14.11.23

Regimes of Robotisation in Europe

Robots create jobs in the North, not the South. Can Europe close that gap?

Executive Summary

Robots reshape employment unevenly across Europe. Using industry-level data from 21 countries between 2011 and 2018, this study finds that robot adoption raises total manufacturing employment — but only in certain structural contexts. Employment gains are concentrated in advanced, service-complementary economies, while peripheral regions show no such effects.

A labour-friendly regime exists only in Europe’s core and service economies. Countries with strong innovation systems, diversified production, and service linkages convert robot adoption into higher labour demand. In these settings, automation complements skilled workers and supports competitiveness. In contrast, in Southern and Eastern Europe, where cost-based strategies dominate and service inputs are weaker, robots bring limited or no employment benefits.

Automation rewards high-skill occupations and bypasses others. Employment growth concentrates among managers, professionals, and technicians — those directly involved in deploying and managing new technologies. Middle-skill and manual jobs see weak or negative effects. Without complementary skills and innovation policies, robot diffusion risks deepening occupational inequality within and across countries.

Europe’s policy debate must recognise structural asymmetries. Treating automation as uniformly job-creating or job-destroying hides key differences. EU forecasts and industrial strategies should account for “regime-specific elasticities” — the distinct way each national and sectoral context responds to technology. Without this nuance, robotisation could amplify rather than reduce Europe’s core–periphery divide.

Policy recommendations

  1. Integrate regime-specific assumptions in EU and national assessments of automation impacts; avoid one-size-fits-all models.

  2. Pair robot diffusion with skills policies that enhance complementarities between technology and labour in manufacturing and services.

  3. Monitor regional and occupational effects to detect where employment gains fail to materialise.

  4. Strengthen service and innovation ecosystems in peripheral economies before scaling robot adoption.

  5. Use industrial policy to turn automation into convergence, not divergence — linking technology diffusion to capability-building.