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The corridor of the east-west Austrian adjacent regions of Karnten, Salzburg, and Tirol,
function as thoroughfares from the eastern and western core regions of Bayern, and the entire
geographic core, into Northern Italy. The southern extremity of the EU geographic core is found in the
northern regions of Italy.
In contrast to the other EU states that form a part of this geographic core, Italy does not have a
cluster of adjoining core regions. Instead, northern Italy contains three core regions, each separated
from the other by an adjacent region. For instance, in the Northeast, the core region of Liguria is
separated from the core region Lombardia by the adjacent region of Piemonte, while in the northwest
the core region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is separated from Lombardia by the adjacent region of
Veneto.
Since core regions are agglomerates, it can be concluded that the EU manufacturing belt
consists primarily of the agglomerates in the countries that signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Since
then, the manufacturing belt was extended to include the UK, with its densely populated
manufacturing regions giving the continental manufacturing belt its current characteristic banana
shape.
Identifying the geographic core is significant because it highlights the EU’s largest population
density continuum. The new trade theory posits that manufacturing locates in proximity to its final
markets. The classification of the composite core regions of the geographic core allows us to study the
industrial complexes in these regions. Alterations and developments in their size and composition will
provide key indicators, which can be utilised to assess the degree to which economic integration has
induced manufacturing to relocate to the EU geographic core or to disperse away from it (Midelfart et.
al., 2000).
7 Agglomerates Outside the EU Geographic Core
The EU geographic core creates a north-south divide of the European common market with
twenty independent urban agglomerates located in the northern and southern regions. The issue of the
independent agglomerates is meaningful because of their industrial composition and stability