While most of Europe shares a common market nowadays and trade barriers are low, the printing industry in Europe still consists of many national industries and markets.

The industry sizes typically differ with the size of the economy of the country, but there are some interesting deviations. The GDP of Italy ranks lower than its population share of all Western Europe. Surprisingly, the share of printing industry revenue is closer to the GDP share than the population share. The driver is Italy being an important net exporter of printed products. The net exports almost equal those of the UK, although the UK has a larger printing industry. This gives Italy the third largest printing industry in Europe.

Sizing the European print industry can be a tough business, as in some areas the data is not available or in other cases multiple sources exist which contradict themselves. The Italian print trade organization Assografici (www.assografici.com) issues statistics as well. Accordingly, when having a discussion, it is important to keep the data source in mind and the limitations it might have.