International sourcing in Europe

The continuous globalisation of the economy has pushed many enterprises to adopt international sourcing as a business model, that is move certain business functions that were performed in-house or domestically sourced by the resident enterprise to either non-affiliated or affiliated enterprises located abroad. Magnitude and impact are difficult to measure as no harmonised and comparable statistics have been available. Twelve countries have launched an ad-hoc survey to establish statistical evidence of the phenomena. The survey results reveal that international sourcing is most common among Irish, UK, Danish, Finnish and Slovenian enterprises. Manufacturing enterprises source far more than enterprises active in other sectors. Most international sourcing of core business and/or support functions remains intra-EU. This publication analyses the survey results e.g. the magnitude of international sourcing broken down be economic sectors, business functions and type of support function.