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 differ typically with the size of the economy of the country, but there are some interesting deviations. France has a smaller printing industry in comparison to other Western European countries than the population or GDP would suggest. The shortfall of internal production is made up by print imports—in fact, France is the only net importer of print among the larger European countries.

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. Intergraf lists UNIIC as the trade organization for France—however, unlike in other countries, the French organization does not publish printing industry statistics publicly. The French association of media professionals IDEP does, however. Accordingly, when having a discussion, it is important to keep the data source in mind and the limitations it might have.