Frankfurt, 14 September 2026 – Commenting on the vote in the European Parliament’s plenary session on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), VDMA Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann says:

• “With the planned extension of the CBAM, the EU is going well beyond its original objective and sending out the wrong signal at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty and international trade disputes. The European Parliament should reject the extension in plenary.”

• “Without data, there can be no CBAM. If key trading partners such as China fail to provide reliable emissions data or make it difficult to verify such data, the entire system lacks a foundation. The EU must recognise the reality of global supply chains. Extending the CBAM to complex industrial products is therefore virtually impossible in practice.”

• “CBAM poses a threat to the competitiveness of the European machinery manufacturing sector. Extending it will lead to significantly higher costs and additional red tape. This jeopardises investment, jobs and Europe’s industrial base. Yet the European machinery manufacturing industy makes a significant contribution to Europe’s value creation, innovation and export strength.”

The VDMA represents 3500 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, both in the EU-27 and in Germany. In the European Union, it represents a turnover volume of an estimated 900 billion euros. Around 80 percent of the machinery sold in the EU comes from a manufacturing plant in the domestic market.