Frankfurt, 12 June 2026 – Regarding today’s meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council, which is seeking to expand the CBAM, VDMA Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann says:

• “The EU must not extend the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) any further, as this would force machinery companies to relocate their production outside Europe. Extending the CBAM would drive up costs for industry and increase the pressure on companies that are already under severe strain due to the global economic situation.”

• “According to the latest drafts, countless product groups are set to be added to the CBAM – including key components for the machinery and equipment manufacturing industry that are not manufactured within the EU and will therefore have to be imported. This would place a significant additional burden on businesses.”

• “We need a mechanism which allows for the permanent exclusion of machinery parts, components, and products from the CBAM scope.”

• “The far-reaching planned expansion will place an additional financial burden on companies, as they are unable to obtain accurate data from the long and complex supply chains outside the EU. As a result, they are forced to rely on artificially high standard values, which come with exorbitantly higher costs. These costs significantly undermine the competitiveness of small and medium-sized industrial enterprises.”

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.