Dear CEMA friends,
As 2022 ends, the CEMA team would like to thank all our members and other stakeholders for their relentless support.
It has been quite a year. With the COVID lockdowns ending, life seemed to be on track to go back to normal. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought horrible human suffering and a new political and business reality.
Supply chain disruptions and high energy prices will likely continue in 2023. Fortunately, the agricultural machinery sector showed its resilience. And thus, managed to provide farmers with high tech equipment so they can keep feeding the world.
The European Union keeps pursuing its goal of a more sustainable farming system. At the same time – due to the war - food security is back on the agenda. The agricultural machinery industry can play a key role in meeting both these challenges by providing innovative agricultural machinery, smart farming tools and precision agriculture technologies (PAT’s) to improve yields, lower farmers’ energy and other costs and limit the environmental impact further.
In 2023, the CEMA team will keep supporting our members and closely follow key ongoing policy processes such as the revision of the Machinery Directive (now Machinery Product Regulation), the Sustainable Use Directive, and the Mother Regulation, but also monitoring proposals on new topics on the EU Agenda like carbon farming, or the carbon border adjustment mechanism.
We would like to thank Jérôme Bandry for his great service to CEMA and the industry at large since his appointment as Secretary General in 2018. He thanks you all for the fruitful cooperating in these five years.
Jelte Wiersma took over as Secretary General from the 16th of December 2022, with Jérôme staying on as a transition manager for a short period.
We wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,
The CEMA team,
Enrica, Chiara, Ivo, Christophe, Vanja and Jelte
