Chemical Workers Say the Money Is There, Invest in Us, and in Europe, NOW

On the eve of the Critical Chemicals Alliance’s final General Assembly, chemical workers from across Europe are making their voices heard with a common message: Enough is Enough. Europe’s largest chemical companies have the money to invest but must choose between enriching their shareholders or committing to Europe’s industrial future.

Europe’s chemical industry is in crisis

Since 2022, around 9% of Europe’s chemical production capacity has been announced for closure, affecting 30,000 direct jobs, with another 90,000 across the supply chain at risk. Perhaps even more worrying is that investment in new chemical plants in Europe has fallen by 81% over the same period.

High energy costs are a major cause, but so is corporate decision-making. For years, the chemical sector needed investment, from upgrading decades-old machinery to building and testing new low-carbon production processes. Instead, many companies bided their time, offshoring production to lower-cost countries while bumping up dividends and relying on government support schemes to keep remaining facilities open at the lowest production capacity possible.

The money is there – but where is it going?

Companies’ own finances can tell this story. From 2010 to 2025, 15 of Europe’s largest chemical companies earned €215 billion in net profit. They spent €138 billion of it on dividends and share buybacks and still held €22.3 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2025. Over this period, companies were profitable 93% of the time (in total years across all companies).

Since 2020, the crisis has markedly worsened. Stiffer overseas competition and rising industrial electricity prices have made it increasingly difficult for management to continue kicking the can down the road. However, the logic of shareholder value maximization continues to prevail, even if it leads to losses. Over the last five years, the companies we analyzed have paid around €10 billion to shareholders just in the years when they made a loss. BASF alone paid out €4.4 billion in 2022, the year it recorded a €0.6 billion loss.

This is why industriAll Europe and our affiliates representing workers in the chemicals sector have long stressed the need for constructive social dialogue and a stakeholder approach to decision-making in the chemicals sector. Now that plants are closing and jobs are being cut, the same companies are asking for public support and fewer rules. Workers will not pay twice: once for the payouts, and again for the closures.

No public money without binding conditions

Today, chemical workers across Europe are sharing our campaign’s messages with a demand to European decision-makers: no public money without binding conditions. Tomorrow, the Critical Chemicals Alliance, set up by the European Commission to identify the chemical production Europe needs to keep, meets for its final General Assembly. Workers want any public support, and any potential Made in Europe scheme for the sector to secure jobs and production in Europe, not the next payout.

IndustriAll Europe is calling for:

binding social conditions on all public support: guaranteed jobs, collective bargaining, reskilling and protection against relocation, no public funds for dividends or buybacks, and clawbacks when commitments are broken;
public procurement and other incentives that use European demand to support European production;
affordable clean energy, and raw materials, R&D and final production anchored in Europe;
a genuine “Made in Europe” approach, with a minimum European-content threshold for publicly supported products.

To management, the message is equally clear: stop the job cuts, respect collective agreements and invest in sites, skills and innovation. Abandoning technology leadership is a corporate choice, not an inevitability.

IndustriAll Europe General Secretary Judith Kirton-Darling said ahead of the General Assembly:

“Europe’s chemical workers have had enough of being told there is no money to invest while billions continue to flow to shareholders. The money is there. The question is what companies choose to do with it. We need investment in European plants, technologies and skills, not more closures and payouts. And where public money is used, there must be a clear return for society: good industrial jobs, production and investment anchored in Europe. No blank cheques or free ETS allocations without conditionalities attached, no public money for dividends or buybacks, and no support for companies that take the money and then close or relocate. Europe needs its chemical industry, and chemical workers need a future. It is time for companies and policymakers to act accordingly.”

Read the chemicals flyer here, follow the digital action on social media, and find all campaign materials on the Enough is Enough campaign page.