Frankfurt, July 15, 2025 – VDMA Chief Executive Thilo Brodtmann comments on the European Commission's draft for the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) expected this week:

• "The European Union needs an appropriate budget to achieve its goals and meet its growing challenges. To this end, the budget must be modernized and prioritized with a view to investment spending and competitiveness. This also means breaking with old habits."

• "New levies paid by companies would be the wrong way to finance this. Europe is already suffering from massive competitive disadvantages. New additional burdens would not only put European companies at a disadvantage in global competition but would also make investment in the EU even more difficult. The European mechanical engineering industry, as an export-intensive sector, would also be affected."

• "Instead of new levies and a patchwork of new own resources, the changed financial requirements must be met as far as possible through reallocations and prioritization. If the budget still needs to be expanded after that, higher contributions from member states would be the lesser and, above all, more transparent evil."

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 percent of the machinery sold in the EU comes from a manufacturing plant in the internal market.