Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Olaf Lies has spoken out strictly against plant closures at Volkswagen in Europe. Given the market situation, VW definitely has to ask itself how many vehicles could still be sold in the long term, the SPD politician told “Welt am Sonntag” according to a preliminary report on Saturday. “But that doesn’t mean that locations in Europe will necessarily be closed.”
He wasn’t ready for that. Lies sits on the VW supervisory board. According to the “Handelsblatt”, documents for a meeting of the control committee on Monday named, among other things, the Lower Saxony VW locations in Hanover and Emden as particularly cost-intensive.
Instead of closing factories, Lies emphasized in the “WamS” that different utilization of the locations should be considered. He renewed his well-known proposal to also produce VW models in Europe in the future that were developed in China together with partners there.
“Why don’t we use these partnerships more in Europe to make full use of our locations here?” The state of Lower Saxony holds 20 percent of the voting rights in Europe’s largest car manufacturer and therefore has the right to veto important decisions. VW CEO Oliver Blume recently announced a reduction in capacity in Europe.
According to the “Handelsblatt”, the VW factory in Zwickau and the Audi factory in Neckarsulm are also mentioned as particularly cost-intensive in the documents for the supervisory board meeting. The newspaper relies on corporate and supervisory board circles for the report.
