Zusammenfassung:
This paper brings new compelling regional-level evidence on the environmental degradation brought about by intra-European value chains. The paper postulates the presence of pollution havens derived as a consequence of the European production integration. We identify a neat elites-ghettos divide in carbon emission intensity per unit of production across EU regions: while capital-city and Northern regions form a carbon elites club, of contained emissions, Eastern regions converge towards systematically higher intensities. We build the intra-EU emission network, looking at the CO₂ embodied in its backwards linkages to account for the extent to which the divide derives from GVC participation. The flow analysis reveals a steady decline in domestic multipliers, but persistently higher carbon intensity in foreign intermediates, with the Eastern regions dominating the most polluting linkages. The elitesghettos regions are characterised by opposite emission paths: while the first export CO₂ via the outsourcing of the most-polluting production activities toward the East, the latter import CO₂ via the production of high-emission intermediaries for the West. In fact, convergence clubs display distinct specialisation profiles, with mid-stream manufacturing regions structurally locked into higher emission intensity. Overall, the paper highlights a discarded dimension of GVCs, that is, the environmental lock-in paths for regions embedded into GVCs to serve as pollution havens for the European carbon elite.
