Italian and Spanish ceramic industries: European excellence at risk without a policy overhaul

The ceramic industries of the Emilia-Romagna and Valencian Community districts represent one of Europe’s leading manufacturing excellences, with significant economic and employment impact: around 80% of European ceramic tile production is concentrated in these two regions, with over 38,000 direct employees and at least 120,000 in the wider supply chain.

In Emilia-Romagna, the sector generates 5% of regional added value, 5% of exports and 10% of the positive trade balance; in the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia, one in thirteen manufacturing workers is employed in the ceramic industry. In the Valencian Community, the sector accounts for 3% of regional GDP and 22% of industrial GDP, with peaks in the province of Castellón, where it represents 32% of GDP and more than a quarter of total employment.

Today, the ceramic industry is facing structural challenges that threaten its very survival. In particular, despite contributing just 0.9% of total regulated emissions, the European ETS system is generating rising and unsustainable costs for the ceramic industry, a “hard-to-abate” sector for which mature and scalable technologies capable of further reducing emissions are not yet available.

The increase in CO₂ costs, combined with high energy prices in Europe, is squeezing margins, reducing investment capacity and favouring competition from non-EU producers subject to significantly lower environmental and social standards. The real risk is a loss of industrial competitiveness, leading to production delocalisation, loss of skilled employment and a paradoxical increase in global emissions.

 

For this reason, regional institutions and the industrial system are calling on the European Union for urgent and targeted action. Key demands include the temporary suspension of the ETS system for the ceramic sector, pending a rapid and broader revision of the mechanism. Immediate emergency measures are also required, such as freezing free allowances and revising benchmarks based on actual technological feasibility. There is also a call to raise the threshold for access to simplified regimes for small emitters and to ensure full integration of the CBAM mechanism, safeguarding competitiveness both in the domestic and international markets, including compensation tools for exports. Finally, a major European research plan dedicated to the ceramic sector—currently lacking—is being urged, in order to develop innovative technologies, support process decarbonisation, reduce dependence on critical raw materials and guide the energy transition without compromising the sector’s economic and social stability.

The objective is clear: to ensure that the ecological transition proceeds with timelines and tools compatible with industrial realities, while safeguarding a strategic value chain for Europe.

“We are in an emergency phase, within a complex international context that requires concrete action,” said Graziano Verdi, Vice Chairman of Confindustria Ceramica and President of CET, the European federation of the sector. “Nowhere in the world is the cost of CO₂ as high as it is here, and Europe also has the highest energy prices globally. Without real technological alternatives, the ETS has shifted from a market mechanism to a tax, with its value increasingly driven by financial speculation, draining resources from companies and making the necessary research and investment impossible. This system puts our companies at risk and action is needed immediately. The two European regions where the main ceramic production hubs are located have clearly expressed this urgency and concern in their joint manifesto and during meetings held in Brussels.”