In 2025, contracts will be renewed in the EU engineering industry.
Eurofer forecasts that the EU machinery sector will face another recession in 2025, with output expected to decline by 1.7% year-on-year, followed by only a modest 1.1% recovery in 2026, although this forecast remains uncertain.
After a modest 1.1% growth in 2023, the sector experienced a sharper-than-expected decline of 5.2% in 2024. This marked a departure from the strong post-pandemic upswing, which was accompanied by an increase of 11.7% in 2021 and 5.2% in 2022, after a decrease of 10% in 2020.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, the volume of production in mechanical engineering decreased for the fifth consecutive quarter by 4.7% after an increase of 4.6% decrease compared to the previous quarter. Despite the fact that during the recovery period, the volume of production in the sector exceeded the level that existed before 2019, its dynamics weakened more and more due to the prolonged effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the escalation of global geopolitical tensions and the deterioration of industrial development prospects. These factors triggered the economic downturn at the end of 2023, which is expected to persist until 2025, Kallanish notes.
Elina Virchenko Bulgaria
Kallanish.com