Even top politicians can run out of steam after eight months of permanent crisis management – Germany’s Economics Minister Robert Habeck didn’t even attempt to hide his fatigue at the “high-level reception” organised by Kunststoffland NRW on the evening preceding the K plastics trade fair. Yet however harried he may have looked, he still formulated his positions in a determined and unambiguous way, saying that the Western world must not allow Vladimir Putin to hold it ransom with Russian gas.

With the threatened, or real, halt to energy supplies, the Russian regime is quite obviously trying to spread uncertainty in Western societies as regards the ability of the social market economy to function – in the hope that these doubts develop into an anti-democratic scepticism and destroy Western democracies from inside. “Putin wants to topple our democratic system by attacking our economic systems,” warned Habeck, reporting online from Berlin. He was talking to the roughly 300 participants at the evening event, whom he had previously sweet-talked with comments such as “you simply cannot overestimate the importance of the chemical industry.”

Before Habeck began speaking, Covestro CEO Markus Steilemann had warned of the “existential crisis” in which the German chemical and plastics industry currently finds itself, noting that it is absolutely essential to now strengthen the one-time “top athlete Germany”. This meant having “not more but better thought-out regulations,” said Steilemann. At the same time, the Covestro boss and freshly appointed VCI president called on politics and industry to seek dialogue: “In the past few weeks, we have been talking too much about the differences. We must talk more about what we have in common.”

As in previous years, Plasteurope.com will have a booth at K 2022. You can find us in hall 6 at booth C 28 for the entirety of the trade fair from 19 – 26 October. We’ll be holding short presentations on polymer prices every day at our booth, where you can also find our sister publications, Kunststoff Information (www.kiweb.de) and K-PROFI (www.k-profi.de).