Historically the EU could set many quality standards that would later be adapted in other markets too. This gave European companies an edge.

But even without other markets. If the EU wants to compete on price rather than quality inside the EU market the only option is to massively lower the wages and standard of living and erase all the purchasing power advantage that was built over the past century. The next step will be to revert to child labor and forced labor as even a cheap EU cannot compete with forcing people to work for free.

By enforcing supply chain transparency European companies are protected from outside competitors who aren’t subject to the same labor standards inside their countries and in their supply chain.

Finally by abolishing the supply chain transparency Germany is helping Russia circumvent sanctions both in import and export and the coalition agreement of the new government already says that they don’t want to surveil the rules but rather trust companies and just do random probes every now and then. This will be a massive boost to Russia and cement the defeat of Ukraine. Merz talks about how he wants to help Ukraine have been empty posturing during opposition times.