6  See European Commission, 2013, “Catching-up processes in the euro area”, in Quarterly Report on the Euro Area, Vol. 12, Issue 1, March 2013. 7  See CompNet Task Force, 2014, “Micro-based evidence of EU competitiveness: the CompNet database”, ECB Working Paper Series No 1634, February 2014.
They could greatly benefit from reorienting their productive structure towards more sophisticated products, upgrading their quality and redirecting their exports towards strongly growing markets. Innovation is crucial in this respect. This means for a start that where profit margins are restored, they should serve to fund research and development to a higher extent.