Robotization in Central and Eastern Europe: catching up or dependence?

ABSTRACT

While in the most developed European countries the combination of falling robot prices and high wages boosts robotization, these driving factors do not sufficiently explain why we are experiencing today a sharp increase in deployment of industrial robots in European countries with low wages. Particularly, in Central and Eastern Europe where a decade ago industrial robots were almost non-existent but today more than 30,000 robots are at work. Hence this paper, by recalculating the data of International Federation of Robotics and EU-KLEMS addresses the main question: What drives and hinders the robotization in Central and Eastern Europe?

KEYWORDS:

• Robotization
• industrial transformation
• territorial development
• Central and Eastern Europe

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION CODES:

• O3
• O14
• O30
• O25

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Enrique Fernández-Macías and Cesira Urzi Brancati for their helpful remarks, the anonymous reviewers for their very valuable suggestions in finalizing the manuscript, and Alexander Tübke and Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello and his colleagues in IRI Team at JRC Unit B.3. Seville, for fostering his interest in the subject that led to this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Disclaimer

The views expressed are purely those of the author and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 In Europe, the proportions of robots belonging to category ‘unspecified’ have fluctuated between 8% and 18% of the total robot stock for the period of 1995 and 2015.

2 Revoz is one of the biggest Slovenian companies and the only car manufacturer in the country which produces Renault models in their robotised plants (https://revoz.si/en/).

3 Because of the different industry classifications of the IFR and the EU KLEMS this study uses the term extended automotive sector for calculating the robot densities in this field and the robot stock refers to IFR categories automotive industry and other vehicles, while the employment corresponds to EU KLEMS category transport equipment.

4 The analysis is based on the IFR robot stock and the term non-automotive sector comprises all industries (including robots in the category ‘unspecified’) except the automotive industry.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Joint Research Centre [grant number Grantholder 40].