Steel sector analysis within the EU Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Steel sector analysis within the EU - Essay Example d the steel sector of the European Union in an adverse manner and presently, the industry is under significant stress in areas relating to reduction in the demand for steel, rise of emerging countries as industrial powerhouse and rising instances of high unemployment. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the European business environment on the steel sector of the country. The idea is to find the factors that are causing challenges for the industry and the ways in which these problems can be resolved. The steel companies in Europe have been primarily under the control of the government in the 80’s. The situation had rapidly changed from 1988-1998 when most of the steel companies were sold to the private sector enterprises. The productivity of the companies had increased rapidly and profitably began to show improvement slowly. Only a fraction of the steel companies remained under the government and the major steel companies sold to the private sector were given full liberty to expand across the national borders. The previous decade has been largely characterized by mergers and acquisitions. European steel companies has been able to create strong profits which had lured number of steel companies from the Asian countries to export steel to Europe, particularly when production was slack in their countries. Further mergers and acquisitions had taken place from 2004 (Wubs, 2008). The following table shows some of the key companies and the output produced from them. The present state of challenges of the steel sector in the European steel sector comes from both internal and external environment. The internal issues arise from the slow recovery of the European economy after the financial crisis and the external issues arise from certain actions that are taken by the trading partners and the policies of the government. The European Union has always maintained very high environmental standards and has constantly committed itself to the reduction of the