Rhein-Westfalen Technical University - RWTH (Aachen, Germany):

V. Liebke, Mag. Sc., Chair of Operative Management, e-mail: redaktion@stahleisen.de

Dr. C. Raidl, the expert in steel area and the president of the Austrian National bank, has opened the 19th Handelsblatt conference in Düsseldorf and has told that the current moment is a breaking point for ferrous metallurgy due to serious financial, economical and political changes. He has observed difficult situation in the German economics in general and in its iron and steel industry in particular. Other lecturers have paid attention to current sharp contradictions between the national and international development tendencies, to the future prospects of European ferrous metallurgy, to importance of the required innovations, to excess of production facilities in European and global metallurgy, to possible market strategies directed on solving this problem, to improvements in steel distribution, to providing the German industry with raw materials, to role of steel as material in competition with other metals and materials, to ecological problems and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and other problems.