Brussels and Berlin Must Act Now

The Construction Equipment and Building Materials Plant Industry warns of long-term competitive disadvantages caused by market shifts on global markets and home-grown structural problems in Europe.

Frankfurt am Main, 30 September 2025 – ‘There is no doubt that the global construction industry will grow in the long term. However, we are concerned that we are currently being deprived of the opportunity to participate in this growth,’ concluded the board members of VDMA Construction – Equipment and Plant Engineering during their last meeting in September.

It has been clear for some time, even before the industry supported sanctions against Russia, that certain global market regions are effectively no longer accessible to European manufacturers. Markets such as China and India can only be supplied from local production. At the same time, construction equipment manufacturers in many third markets face dominant and often unfair competition from China. Contrary to the original statement by EU Commission President von der Leyen, the trade agreement with the USA has not brought lasting stability but has already become obsolete again due to the extended steel tariffs and associated administrative hurdles for the construction equipment industry.

Compensating for lost exports on the European domestic market is virtually impossible due to the location disadvantages. The announced measures to reduce bureaucracy and deregulate are still pending. For years, the industry has been fighting to have well-intentioned but excessive sustainability regulations reduced to a reasonable level in order to remain competitive. At the same time, infrastructure spending in Germany is urgently needed. However, it would be more important to reform the inefficient system rather than invest money in it.

Joachim Strobel, Chairman of VDMA Construction – Equipment and Plant Engineering, emphasises:

„We can be glad that we will probably only see a 5 per cent decline in sales this year. The focus must be less on economic fluctuations and more on the massive structural problems. Their effects are not yet visible in the figures, but they will cause us enormous problems in the coming years. Brussels and Berlin must act now, otherwise we will face a process in which we gradually lose competitiveness, and more and more manufacturers will be forced to relocate their activities outside Europe.”

Do you have any questions? VDMA Construction, Martina Scherbel, Press and Public Relations, will be happy to answer them: 069 6603 1257, martina.scherbel@vdma.eu.

The VDMA represents 3600 German and European mechanical and plant engineering companies.

The industry stands for innovation, export orientation and SMEs. The companies employ around 3 million people in the EU-27, more than 1.2 million of them in Germany alone. This makes mechanical and plant engineering the largest employer among the capital goods industries, both in the EU-27 and in Germany. In the European Union, it represents a turnover volume of an estimated 870 billion euros.
Around 80 percent of the machinery sold in the EU comes from a manufacturing plant in the domestic market.

Pict. subtitle: Chairman, VDMA Construction – Equipment and Plant Engineering, Joachim Strobel
Pict. source: Liebherr EMtec