>Germany's industry is famously reliant on "hidden champions": specialist mid-sized companies you've never heard of, producing, say, industrial pumps, chewing-g

>Germany's industry is famously reliant on "hidden champions": specialist mid-sized companies you've never heard of, producing, say, industrial pumps, chewing-gum wrapping machines, or large curved glass panels. Besides smaug7's point (which the article also makes), mittelstand is a German, not European, phenomenon.