Frankfurt, 10 June 2026 – Commenting on the trilogue agreement on the EU Defence Readiness Omnibus VDMA Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann says:

• “With the political agreement on the EU Defence Readiness Omnibus, the EU is sending an important signal to the European machinery industry as well. Greater speed, simplification and scalability are crucial to advancing the development of European security as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

• “The EU has finally recognised that existing environmental and chemicals standards, as well as lengthy permitting procedures, create disproportionately large obstacles to the goals of European defence capability. The regulatory framework, designed for peacetime, has unnecessarily held back companies with clear potential for European defence readiness.”

• “For the machinery and equipment manufacturing sector, the agreement immediately creates scope for action in two areas: faster permitting procedures for production facilities and clearer exemptions under environmental and chemicals legislation. Until now, these have been the biggest hurdles for small and medium-sized enterprises wishing to enter the security and defence sector.”

• “The VDMA will continue to play an active role in the debate on European defence policy to ensure that industrial production technologies are recognised as an indispensable component of Europe’s defence capabilities.”

The VDMA represents 3500 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 900 billion euros. Around 80 percent of the machinery sold in the EU comes from a manufacturing plant in the domestic market.