After less than a decade, the eastern European nations were ready to be significant players in the global market. Companies from western Europe were eager to establish themselves in the East, with its lower real estate costs and large labor supply.
By November 2006, John Tagliabue could write:
For Slovakia, the recent inauguration of an $890 million automobile factory was a major event. The prime minister and other government officials attended. French executives from Peugeot Citroën, which built the factory, flew into the tiny town of Trnava, where the sprawling factory is expected to employ up to 3,500 people and churn out as many as 300,000 compact cars a year. After the collapse of Communism in 1989, many foreign carmakers rushed to acquire local carmakers or build their own factories in countries like Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic.
By the end of 2022, Slovakia would be home to four car assembly plants as well as several part supplier plants, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).
The Slovakian automobile industry would be producing 12.6 cars per worker by the end of 2023, making it the second most efficient car industry in Europe, as stated by ACEA.
This was the vision back in 2006: the eastern European nations were growing into the world economy, and while recovering from the Soviet Socialist era, they still had advantages and resources which allowed them to complete, as John Tagliabue wrote:
That relative trickle, though, is now a flood. The money has been pouring in, and the pace and frenzy is prompting talk of Europe’s auto industry shifting from west to east.By 2010, the Czech Republic could nearly double its production over last year, to more than a million cars. Indeed, as a whole, Eastern Europe has become Europe’s backyard manufacturing center, and it could be producing 3.4 million cars annually by 2010, a 33 percent jump over 2005, according to forecasts by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even Russia’s production is expected to rise to 1.6 million cars a year from 1.2 million now.
The Czech Republic’s efficiency was, however, half of Slovakia’s at the end of 2023. The Czech automobile sector produced 6.3 cars per worker.
In Slovakia, at the end of 2021, 16% of all the country’s manufacturing workers were in the auto industry, making it the most auto-oriented economy in Europe.
In the 35 years of post-Soviet growth, there have been setbacks. In 2022, Slovakia produced 970,275 motor vehicles, all of which were passenger cars. In that same year, the Czech Republic produced 1,221,246 vehicles, of which 1,214,746 were passenger cars.
Despite these impressive numbers, it was in western Europe where the largest per-country numbers of vehicles were manufactured, with Germany in first place in 2022. The former Soviet-bloc countries came in at fourth place (the Czech Republic) and fifth place (Slovakia).
While total European car manufacturing peaked in 2017, with an output of around 14,914,629 units, Slovakian car manufacturing peaked in 2019, with 1,107,902 units. The decline in European totals began pre-pandemic, while Slovakia was going strong until the pandemic.
While Slovakia has returned to almost pre-pandemic levels, with an output of 1,080,000 in 2023, Europe as a whole has not returned to its 2017 peak, manufacturing 10,890,123 cars in 2022.
Industry trends and market trends are constantly changing, but it can be said that eastern European nations have become major players in the auto industry during the last 35 years.
