Frankfurt, 29 July 2025 – Hartmut Rauen, Deputy Executive Director of the VDMA, comments on the planned European Competitiveness Fund and the next EU research framework programme:

• "It is good that the EU Commission wants to use its budget more to support European competitiveness. The plan to almost double the budget for the Horizon Europe research programme to 175 billion euros is a particularly positive signal: the EU is committed to innovation and is taking up the fight for global technological leadership."
• "However, the drafts leave a number of questions unanswered. Climate protection, resilience and security are fundamentally the right goals, but it is unclear where horizontal key technologies such as robotics, industrial AI or production technologies will fit in. These technologies are of fundamental importance because they have a wide range of applications and benefit all sectors."
• "The EU institutions must urgently revise these budget plans in further negotiations. Instead of focusing on supporting individual sectors, priority should be given to securing the technological base in a way that has a broad impact."

Hartmut Rauen, Deputy Executive Director of the VDMA

The VDMA represents 3,600 German and European companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sector. The industry stands for innovation, export orientation and small and medium-sized enterprises. The companies employ a total of 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. It accounts for an estimated turnover of around 870 billion euros in the European Union. Around 80 per cent of the machinery sold in the EU comes from a manufacturing plant in the internal market.