On September 9, 2020, AEB CEO Tadzio Schilling delivered a welcome speech at the opening of the conference "Construction Industry Dialogue", organized by Messe Munich Rus LLC and Kommersant Publishing House with the support of AEB.

This year the conference has been dedicated to the global pandemic and how its consequences would affect the construction industry.

Tadzio Schilling emphasized that 2020 became an unprecedented year in terms of the impact of the Coronavirus Infection Pandemic (COVID-19) on the world. According to an AEB survey of European companies, 90% of respondents said that the crisis had affected their business to some extent. This also applies to the construction equipment industry, which is represented in the AEB by the relevant committee. According to the data for the 2nd quarter of 2020,  new construction equipment sales decreased by 15% and by 5% in the first half of 2020. 

As the Committee Chairman Andrey Komov noted at the conference, the decline can be considered moderate, and the active phase of the road-building season helped to curb this decline.