Welcome!
Four years have passed since the last General Assembly – four years that have shaken many apparent certainties and posed major challenges for industrial SMEs. After the pandemic was overcome, the climate goals and the transformation effort to achieve them seemed to be the most important task – certainly garnished with considerable opportunities for our mechanical engineering enabler industry. But then came Russia's invasion of Ukraine – the war has come to Europe, unimaginable for most. As a result, the gas crisis, energy price shocks and sanctions regimes. Politicians have inferred resilience and strategic autonomy from this – and in doing so, they have thought of regulation and subsidies. The "turning point" is lost in the political discourse – to the detriment of our international competitiveness.
However, the mechanical and plant engineering sector did not allow itself to be defeated: the real decline in production was much smaller than at the time of the financial crisis. So let's talk together at the VDMA General Assembly about how we can step on the gas again – despite Putin, Xi and perhaps Trump. Decarbonization and digitalization are megatrends that give us some trump cards: How can both be realized without us?
Karl Haeusgen
VDMA President
Dear VDMA members,
The world has changed in the last four years and this change has affected the member companies as well as the VDMA and its organization. The demands placed on the association have become more diverse and complex - especially in terms of its speed of reaction to pressing problems. Regardless of whether it is about the question of how a company can implement the Corona hygiene rules during ongoing operations, what new details are in the latest refinement of the Russia sanctions or how a medium-sized company can prepare for the obligation to prepare sustainability reports - the VDMA has set itself the goal of always providing its member companies with advice and support as a responsive and indispensable partner.
We have done a lot to achieve this within our own organization over the past four years. Our “INSPIRE” program was and is the basis for a variety of improved services, ranging from a modern, topic-based web platform with an expanded member area to a newly designed statistics database with individual configuration options to significantly increased political lobbying in Brussels and Berlin. And not to forget, we have opened offices in the USA, Italy, Benelux and Poland to strengthen the VDMA's international network.
We do all of this with the clear goal of offering our member companies services that are unique, just like our industry. And we want to continue this work with and for you in the future. “Unique.” is the motto of our general meeting this year, and it is a promise that we want to keep in the future.
Thilo Brodtmann
VDMA General Manager
