Europe set to face manufacturing crossroads as appliance market loses 11 years of growth
Europe’s home appliance market has wiped out over a decade of progress. European sales ended 2025 at roughly 170 million units, dropping market volumes back to 2015 levels, while the share of appliances made in Europe for European consumers plummeted from over 80% to 71%.
The findings, published in the 10th edition of APPLiA’s Home Appliance Monitor, reveal an industry caught in a squeeze: despite driving record household energy efficiency and slashing factory emissions, European manufacturers are losing ground to increasingly challenging global pressures.
"Europe faces a defining challenge: to maintain industrial leadership while advancing a clean, competitive and fair transition," said Reinhard Zinkann, APPLiA President, Executive Director and Co-Proprietor of Miele Group. "Efficiency, resilience and sustainability are central to this ambition. For industry to keep delivering, Europe needs the right conditions: a stable and predictable regulatory framework, a strong Single Market and a level playing field for all actors."
The report makes clear that Europe’s declining market share is not an innovation failure, but the result of severe structural disadvantages:
- European factories face industrial energy prices two to three times higher than major competitors, alongside rising local labor and material costs.
- A cumulative regulatory burden is expanding faster than the market can grow.
- An influx of low-value products continues to enter the Single Market without meeting or verifying EU legal standards.
At the same time, the sector is actively powering Europe’s green transition:
- Appliance manufacturers have halved factory energy use (-50%), cut waste by 18%, and reduced water usage by 14%.
- The rapid deployment of top-tier (A/B) efficient appliances—up 4.4x since 2020—has protected consumers from volatile energy prices, delivering 98.9 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) in cumulative energy savings since 2000.
- The industry’s repair network successfully resolved 95% of consumer repair requests, while recycling operations recovered 3.7 million tonnes of secondary raw materials from electronic waste.
"Our sector delivers clean technology, local jobs and circular solutions. It does so under conditions that grow more unequal every year," said Paolo Falcioni, APPLiA Director General. "Fixing that takes three things: market enforcement that works, a level playing field, and urgent action on cumulative regulatory burdens. Europe cannot afford to lose an €80 billion manufacturing base."
