12% of transport jobs tied to foreign-controlled groups

In 2023, 1.3 million people in the EU were employed by transport and storage enterprises belonging to foreign-controlled multinational enterprise (MNE) groups, based on the EuroGroups register.

This was an increase of 30% since 2018. The number represented a 12% share of the total employment in the sector (NACE section H: Transport and storage, abbreviated as 'Transport' below). Overall, two-thirds of these 1.3 million employees in transport worked for enterprises belonging to MNE groups controlled by other EU or by EFTA countries (one-third by non-EU non-EFTA countries).

In absolute terms, Germany had the highest total employment in transport enterprises belonging to foreign-controlled MNE groups (191 000 people), followed by Poland (167 000 people) and Spain (126 000 people).

The highest shares were found in Luxembourg (33.4%), Sweden (37.5%) and the Netherlands (25.9%), while the lowest were reported by France (5.9%), Lithuania (6.4%) and Greece (6.7%).

Source data: EuroGroups register and SBS data

When looking at the top countries of controlling, Germany had again the highest employment (232 000 persons employed by German MNE groups in other EU countries), followed by France (176 000) and the Netherlands (72 000).