About the project

Please note that the project run from January 2015 to December 2018.

‘Reshoring’ is the relocation of previously offshored value chain activities (particularly: production; sourcing; research and development; services) back to the EU. It can represent a key trigger to revamp EU’s manufacturing industry over the coming years and restore EU as a global location of excellence in manufacturing. Monitoring the evolution, magnitude and motivations of reshoring is of paramount importance to understand the drivers of reshoring decisions, to learn the way reshoring is implemented, and to evaluate the role of policy in encouraging the phenomenon.

The European Reshoring Monitor collects information on individual reshoring cases from several sources (media, specialized press, scientific literature, practitioner literature) and it organizes it into a secured access, regularly updated online database. Eurofound will publish an annual summary report based on the information collected. As a complementary task, the monitor also develops and updates an online database of reference material on reshoring (i.e., research articles, consultancy reports, policy reports, key media articles, policy initiatives at regional, national or EU level or analysis based on quantitative reshoring data).

Within the scope of this initiative, the following cases of reshoring are considered:

  • Companies that reshore to their home country (within the EU) value chain activities previously offshored to another country (e.g. manufacturing by a German firm previously offshored to China or to France and now returning to Germany).
  • Companies that reshore to any EU country value chain activities previously offshored to a non-EU country (e.g. manufacturing by a German firm previously offshored to China and now returning to Italy).

The European Reshoring Monitor is a Eurofound initiative whose goal is to identify, analyse and summarize evidence on the reshoring of manufacturing and other value-chain activities to the EU. It is a pilot initiative undertaken as part of a multi-annual research (2015-18) project on the Future of Manufacturing in Europe. Eurofound has been entrusted with the management of this project by the European Commission. 

Reshoring cases

Reshoring reference materials

Research team