mr president the public financing of opel vauxhall by one or more european governments is the issue that i will address
as you know last thursday the opel trust in which general motors gm and the german authorities have equal representation announced that it has approved the sale by gm of a majority stake in its european opel vauxhall operations to the consortium of magna international and sberbank
this decision by the owners of opel has been supported by the german government
the german government promised to grant public funds of up to eur four point five billion to the new opel with the possible participation of other european governments
mr president the commission has kept in touch with all the member states concerned throughout the process which led to this transaction and the commission is also aware of the controversies regarding the respective merits of the restructuring plans presented by different bidders including the doubt publicly expressed by certain members of the opel trust
concerning the public financing of the gm magna transaction we have been informed that the german government intends to avail itself of a pre-existing approved scheme under the commission's temporary framework for state aid measures to support access to finance in the current financial and economic crisis
mr president i intend to verify carefully whether this scheme can be used in this case and you will certainly understand that i cannot take a position at this stage since the deal is not yet finalised and by the way a number of aspects are still being negotiated
however at this moment it is quite important that i should outline to you the most relevant considerations
in particular i have to underline that state aid granted under the temporary framework cannot be subject or to additional conditions concerning location of investments or the geographic distribution of restructuring efforts
such conditions would create and i am quite clear on this unacceptable distortions in the internal markets and could trigger a subsidy race which would significantly damage the european economy at the present very delicate moment
moreover if the restructuring of a european company was determined by non-commercial conditions attached to public financing there would be a risk that a company would not be able to restore its long-term viability and that risk to viability is all the greater due to the current weakened state of the entire european car industry
the european car industry as we are all aware suffers from considerable overcapacity
so a failed restructuring would result in great damage for the company and for its workers in negative spillovers for the whole sector and in a waste of taxpayer's money
and those principles will be my guidance in my assessment in the opel case
i will verify whether non-commercial protectionist conditions are attached to public funding or and the commission will examine not only the legal conditions that may be attached to a final aid package but also the entire context in which the aid is granted
and i will be particularly interested to find out whether the german authorities have effectively linked the provision of aid to a single bidder and if so to find out why they regarded that bidder's business plan as preferable from an industrial and commercial point of view
in the short term it is a sad fact that because of the current state of overcapacity in the car industry any plan to restore the profitability of opel vauxhall will require job losses across the company as a whole and planned closures all the plans to save opel vauxhall presented by different potential investors have foreseen both plant closures and job cuts
however a social restructuring is the only way to ensure viable and stable jobs for the future and the commission cannot and should not try to dictate where such cuts will fall nor can it try to prevent them
we will however be scrutinising the process very carefully to ensure that it is based on commercial considerations designed to sustain viable jobs and not protectionist motives
