Commenting on the Chancellor's trip to India, VDMA’s Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann said:

• ‘Chancellor Friedrich Merz should use the momentum created by the Mercosur agreement and accelerate the conclusion of the Free Trade Agreement with India, preferably by the end of January. The agreement would significantly enhance the international competitiveness of the mechanical engineering sector, as India currently levies customs duties of up to 8 per cent on mechanical engineering products.’

• ‘It is also essential to remove technical trade barriers on the Indian side. India's own standards and local content requirements such as ’Make in India‘, which link market access to manufacturing in the country, are a significant obstacle to trade.’

• ‘India is one of the fastest-growing economies and offers enormous potential for mechanical engineering. The market is central to our companies' diversification and reduction of dependence on China. We should make consistent use of this opportunity.’

VDMA's Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann

VDMA represents 3,500 German and European mechanical and plant engineering companies. 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 facility in the internal market.