The Federazione ANIE, which represents over 1,100 technology companies in electrotechnics, electronics, and industrial contracting within the Confindustria system, has circulated the findings of the latest CSC Working Paper No. 1/2025, published by the Centro Studi di Confindustria. The report examines European import dependencies across global industrial networks, particularly in strategic sectors for the green and digital transitions.

Titled “Cracks in the Distribution Chain: Mapping European Import Dependencies in Global Industrial Networks”, the analysis highlights vulnerabilities in EU supply chains, especially those critical to energy infrastructure, industrial technology, and advanced electronics. These dependencies are assessed using multiple criteria: import concentration, trade balance, supplier country risk profiles, and substitutability with domestic, intra-EU, or alternative global sources.

Based on bilateral trade data for over 5,000 products, the study finds that structural barriers to diversifying supply sources persist, raising strategic concerns for Europe, particularly in comparison with China and the United States. It identifies 46 industrial products that are critical to the EU, Italy, France, and Germany, representing 90% of the value of critical imports. Of these, 85.5% come from countries exposed to geopolitical or climate-related risk.

China alone accounts for 78% of the value of these strategic imports, underlining the Union’s reliance on a limited group of suppliers for key raw materials, semi-finished products, and capital goods essential to battery production, renewable energy systems, and industrial decarbonisation technologies.

The report also notes that none of the countries analysed has consistently diversified its import origins over the past decade, suggesting that critical dependencies stem from long-term structural choices favouring efficiency and international production allocation.

An innovative aspect of the study is its use of an iterative algorithm to simulate alternative supplier distributions. This modelling shows that, for certain products such as quartzite and antimony, supply concentration could be reduced by up to 20–24 percentage points through better global diversification, without increasing import costs or volumes.

The paper concludes that while full decoupling is neither realistic nor desirable, selective diversification—supported by reliable trade partnerships and enhanced internal EU coordination—could significantly improve resilience in strategic industrial sectors.