Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-08-Speech-1-134"
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"en.20100208.15.1-134"2
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"Madam President, honourable Members, the present debate concerns a question of great interest to the European public: the public financing of the restructuring of the Opel/Vauxhall group by one or more European governments.
It is sad to see that the Opel/Vauxhall group deems plant closures necessary. I must stress that this decision was taken by General Motors alone. The Commission cannot, and must not, seek to stipulate the location in which these reductions will be made. It is unable to avoid them, but it can anticipate their consequences.
The Commission, in coordination with the Belgian authorities, stands ready to use all of the resources at its disposal to assist these workers. The possibility of Belgium presenting a request for assistance under the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund has been discussed. This is certainly one option to be explored and, at first sight, it would appear that this request for assistance, were it to be confirmed, would meet the required criteria.
The Commission has monitored this question closely. On 14 July 2009, Commissioner Kroes and I raised the case of the Opel/Vauxhall group with you here in the European Parliament. The Commission has also organised several informal meetings with the European ministers responsible for this matter.
As you know, in autumn 2009, General Motors decided to keep hold of Opel/Vauxhall and to restructure the company. At the end of November 2009, General Motors presented a summary of its restructuring plan to the services responsible for competition.
Although the role of the Commission does not usually involve prior assessment of the industrial and commercial rationale behind a restructuring case, in the absence of information from the Member States on potential State aid for the plan, the Commission’s services undertook such an assessment at the request of the Competitiveness Council.
On the basis of the content of the General Motors restructuring plan and of the information supplied to the Commission, it would appear that this restructuring plan is not based on non-economic considerations, which would damage the future viability of the Opel/Vauxhall group’s European operations.
The current General Motors plan shares a number of characteristics with other restructuring plans prepared previously by General Motors itself and by other interested investors, and does so in certain key areas. It is consistent with earlier General Motors decisions taken before the start of the crisis, in particular, on the issue of allocating a particular model to a particular production site.
Moreover, General Motors has given an economic justification for its decisions relating to the reorganisation of its production plants across Europe by referring to the specific situation of the individual plants. These decisions seem to be motivated by considerations such as the range of models allocated to different sites in Europe, the respective life cycles of the various models, the respective production volumes for a given model that is currently produced at more that one site, the relatively low level of extra investment required to further centralise the production of a given model, the value to the plant of certain upstream processes, and so on.
I understand that General Motors has yet to discuss this plan with the workers’ representatives, who are expected to make commitments in order to allow significant cost reductions to be made in Europe. The Commission will remain vigilant and will ensure that, where State aid is involved, the restructuring of Opel/Vauxhall will remain based on economic considerations, that it will not be influenced by non-commercial conditions linked to State financing and, in particular, that the geographical breakdown of the restructuring efforts will not be affected by political demands.
The Commission will continue, of course, to monitor closely all developments within the Opel group. In this context, you are surely aware that, on 21 January 2010, General Motors officially announced its intention to close the Anvers site in 2010. I understand the concerns caused by the announcement of thousands of job losses at that plant."@en1
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