Brussels/Frankfurt, 21 January 2021 – VDMA Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann comments on the discussion in the European Council on the Europe-wide coordination of pandemic measures:

"The calls for border closures, which are now increasingly arising again in some EU Member States, must be buried as soon as possible. In the first wave of the pandemic, we had to learn painfully that closed borders impair central value chains and can lead to bottlenecks in important goods and services.

Industry in Europe, and especially in the European single market, is now so closely intertwined that border closures have unforeseeable consequences. Particularly in sectors such as the pharmaceutical or food industries, machinery in one country cannot be allowed to stand still because, for example, service workers from another country are prevented from travelling across the border to carry out necessary repairs.

Instead of threatening border closures, EU Member States would be well advised to better coordinate their Corona measures. The pandemic can only be fought on a European scale."