8 June 2026 – The European steel association EUROFER is lamenting record lows in crude steel production. What the association leaves unsaid in its annual report is more revealing than what it says. Dilapidated tracks, throttled blast furnaces: political inaction is paralyzing Germany’s economy.
EUROFER’s Crisis Fairy Tale: When Lobbyists Make Numbers Work for Them
The European steel association EUROFER is lamenting record lows in crude steel production. What it leaves unsaid is more revealing than what it says.
The Narrative: Historic Low
EUROFER has presented its annual report for 2025 – and the message is grim as usual: EU crude steel production has fallen to 125.8 million tonnes, the lowest level of all time. The implicit demand behind it is familiar: more protection, more subsidies, more shielding from international competition. Only: is that picture even accurate?
What the Numbers Really Show
One look at the production chain is enough to shake the narrative. Production of hot-rolled steel – the actual market-relevant end product – has remained almost constant for years. Put differently: in 2025, European producers generated the same amount of hot-rolled steel as before with around four million tonnes less crude steel.
That is not a crisis. That is an efficiency gain.
These “efficiency improvements” are particularly noticeable again and again among German producers – and raise the question of how reliable EUROFER’s crude steel figures really are as a crisis indicator.
The German Special Effect
The main driver of the decline in 2025 lies in Germany – and here, too, reality is more complex than the lobby narrative. A large blast furnace had to undergo emergency maintenance for several months. A second one was shut down.
Before EUROFER derives insufficient capacity utilization from this: the shut-down blast furnace is currently being replaced by a new direct reduction plant for sponge iron (DRI). That is not industrial retreat – that is technological restructuring. Anyone selling this as proof of site decline is bending the facts.
The Omitted Chapter: Revenue
What EUROFER consistently omits in its annual report: the economic situation of European steel producers has improved significantly despite – or precisely because of? – declining volumes. Compared with 2021, revenue per tonne of crude steel has risen by more than 60%. Since 2022, producers have generated significantly more revenue with significantly less production.
Less tonnage, more margin. That does not sound like an industry on the brink – it sounds like an industry strategically repositioning its market position while relying on political protection reflexes it no longer economically needs.
EUROFER’s crisis rhetoric follows a proven logic: set crude steel volume as the leading indicator, conceal efficiency gains or order book shaping, redefine investments in new technologies as capacity losses, ignore revenue development. The goal is not analysis – it is lobbying.
Trade-policy decisions in Brussels based on such selectively prepared association reports ultimately harm those they are supposedly meant to protect: buyers, processors, and SMEs along the entire value chain.
Dilapidated Tracks, Throttled Blast Furnaces: Political Inaction Is Paralyzing Germany’s Economy
The German steel manufacturers’ association WV Stahl reports: the desolate rail network of Deutsche Bahn is delaying raw material deliveries – iron ore and coal no longer arrive on time, and blast furnace production is being throttled.
But the cause is not the global market. The cause is more than twenty years of political mismanagement and systematic neglect of Germany’s transport infrastructure.
The Solution is Infrastructure Investment, not Market Foreclosure
A warning for the coming debate: if this production decline is soon used as an argument for new import tariffs or measures against third countries – object. No foreign steel producer cut Deutsche Bahn to pieces through austerity. The solution is infrastructure investment, not market foreclosure.
Compensating for political inaction through tariffs comes at the expense of consumers and the entire downstream value chain. That should be kept in mind when the next wailing performance hits Brussels or Berlin.
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