Frankfurt/Brussels, 12 November 2025 – Ahead of the upcoming second vote on the Omnibus Sustainability Package in the European Parliament, VDMA’s Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann calls for:
• "Enough with the party political games – what is needed is a clear commitment to reducing bureaucracy and strengthening the competitiveness of European companies! Cosmetic changes do not help industry; serious relief is urgently needed. We appeal to centrist MEPs to vote together for a change that deserves to be called bureaucracy relief."
• "Raising the thresholds is a step in the right direction. However, it must be accompanied by measures to prevent European SMEs from being indirectly affected. This mainly concerns non-targeted supply chain requirements."
• "Countries with recognised low risk and human rights legislation must be removed from the duty of care. Companies should only have to bear the risks that they can control – and this only applies as a rule to direct suppliers! In addition, the civil liability clause should definitely be deleted."
VDMA Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann
VDMA represents 3,600 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 in both the EU-27 and Germany. In the European Union, it represents an estimated turnover of 870 billion euros.
Around 80 per cent of the machinery sold in the EU comes from a domestic production facility.
