Germany’s steel and metals fabricators are asking to be protected against imports to the same degree as steelmakers are, according to their federation Wirtschaftsverband Stahl- und Metallverarbeitung (WSM).
The federation has issued a call to the government and the European Union in reaction to the demonstrations by steelworkers for more political support earlier this month.
Those demonstrations “shed a limelight on 20%, while 80% are just extras in the background”, WSM states, referring to the ratio of jobs along the steel value chain, with fabricators provide five times as many jobs as the steelmakers.
“If you protect only the steelmakers from unfair imports, you are stopping short,” says WSM’s managing director, Christian Vietmeyer.
This echoes calls expressed at Kallanish’s Europe Steel Markets 2026 conference in Vienna this month, where speakers demanded that makers of steel-based products be included in the EU’s measures.
Players further down the chain are mainly small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which are fragmented, are easily overlooked, said Alexander Julius, president of distributors association Eurometal during a panel.
This puts them at a disadvantage against the mills, which traditionally have a strong lobby at EU level, he noted. Eurometal had earlier pointed out repeatedly that protection for mills makes little sense if their domestic customers remain under threat.
Domestic sheet formers, forges, makers of fasteners and springs and other components are pushed out of competition by pressure from Asia, Vietmeyer adds.
“A decline of orders has brought a profound structural crisis. To stop that trend, an expansion of the safeguards is unavoidable,” Vietmeyer says.
Meanwhile, the mechanical engineering association, VDMA, has warned against a widening of EU measures, arguing that it will block the entry of components that are not available in Europe (see Kallanish 16 June 2026).
An expansion of EU measures could therefore motivate the makers of big machinery and plants to cooperate more with European fabricators, making the development of components a joint effort, and so strengthen domestic value chains.
