Our paper pleads for the importance of strategic industries in the context of the renewed interest in industrial policy. Methods of identifying strategic industries are presented and accompanied by examples of industrial policy measures in countries as USA and Japan. The EU industrial profile is briefly presented so that a correlation between selection criteria of strategic industries and the EU strategic options could be drawn. These correlations represent a view at the EU level and differ from the ones that can be made at members’ country level, based on the common industrial strategy. Strategic sectors will remain a focus point on the industrial agenda of most countries but motivations and selection criteria are widely different
