On the eve of the "steel summit", German Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economics Lars Klingbeil called for a rapid and complete cessation of all steel imports from Russia.
This is reported by the German publication Spiegel.
Klingbeil proposes instead to increase domestic production in Germany and across Europe, with a focus on climate-friendly, high-quality steel. He names infrastructure and the automotive industry as priority sectors.
Politicians will be able to discuss the proposal during a meeting on November 6, to which Chancellor Friedrich Merz has invited representatives of the steel industry and the prime ministers of the steel-producing federal states — North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Brandenburg and Saarland.
“Steel slabs produced in Russia and further processed in the EU are still exempt from sanctions. You cannot explain to any worker in our steel industry why Europe still keeps the market open to Putin,” the minister said.
The German steel industry is suffering from a crisis in its customer sectors, especially the automotive industry. Rising energy prices, cheap imports, particularly from China, the costs of more environmentally friendly steel production and high tariffs on steel imports from the United States are creating problems for the industry, writes Spiegel.
Germany, the EU and Russian steel
In September, Germanyʼs largest steel company “Thyssenkrupp Steel” sharply condemned the import of metal products from Russia, the German media outlet Oldenburger Onlinezeitung reported.
According to the German Steel Association, Russian imports to the EU of steel ingots and so-called semi-finished products — that is, blanks that have already been formed from raw steel but have not yet been processed into finished products — increased to 3.56 million tons in 2025, compared to 3.26 million tons in the previous year.
“Thyssenkrupp Steel” has expressed dissatisfaction with the EU allowing massive imports of steel from Russia while German industry faces job losses and finances the Russian war economy by buying slabs.
Already in October, the European Commission presented an official proposal to protect the EUʼs domestic steel sector — the volume of duty-free imports should be reduced by almost half, and the tariff on imports exceeding this amount should be doubled to 50%, according to an EC press release.
Author: Anastasia Zaikova
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