In particular, German car manufacturers forecast a significant reduction in demand on the fifth most important export market and the freezing of a number of joint initiatives due to the situation around Ukraine. This conflict, in turn, could provoke tougher sanctions against the Russian Federation, which, according to the head of the German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association, Reinhold Festge, could negatively affect the entire industry: "Russia can certainly pull us down."
Festge emphasized that neither the Russian side nor German automakers have a clear understanding of further developments, and it is this uncertainty that could lead to crisis phenomena in mechanical engineering.
