Overview
- A government spokesman confirmed invitations to cabinet members Lars Klingbeil, Katherina Reiche and Bärbel Bas, industry representatives, and the minister-presidents of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Brandenburg and Saarland.
- The agenda focuses on resilience, trade relations and energy costs, with the stated goal of preserving domestic steel production and employment.
- The sector faces weak demand from the auto industry, elevated energy prices, cheaper imports—particularly from China—costly decarbonisation investments and U.S. tariffs.
- The European Commission proposed in early October to roughly halve duty-free steel import quotas and to raise the out-of-quota tariff to 50 percent, pending approval by EU member states.
- The federal government is developing a subsidised industrial electricity price as a potential relief measure for energy-intensive producers.