The European Union region as a whole remains a leading producer of both textile and apparel. Production is almost equally divided between textile manufacturing and apparel manufacturing. Southern and western EU where most developed EU members are located such as Germany, France, and Italy account for nearly 80 per cent of EU’s textile manufacturing. Of the EU’s total textile output, the share of non-woven and other technical textile products increased from 20.2 per cent in 2011 to 23.2 per cent in 2016.

Apparel manufacturing in the EU includes two primary categories: one is the medium-priced products for consumption in the mass market, which are produced primarily by developing countries in eastern and southern Europe, such as Poland, Hungary, and Romania, where cheap labor is relatively abundant. The other category is the high-end luxury apparel produced by developed western EU countries such as Italy, UK, France, and Germany.

In western EU countries, labor only accounted for 21.1 per cent of the total apparel production cost in 2016, which is substantially lower than 30.1 per cent back in 2006. This change suggests that apparel manufacturing is becoming capital and technology-intensive in some developed western EU countries, which could be the result of increased investment in automation technology.