Europe’s automotive giants are under siege — and not just from tariffs and trade wars. Chinese automakers are aggressively expanding into and around the European market, and industry insiders are sounding alarms.
Stavros Christidis, the president of the 11,900-strong works council at Volkswagen’s Hanover plant and a member of Germany’s powerful IG Metall union, told Ta Nea that Chinese companies are “encircling” the EU. He called on Brussels to take decisive action to protect European competitiveness, arguing that the continent needs to mirror the kind of industrial policy China itself employs.
Meanwhile, at Bosch, Germany’s largest auto parts supplier, the head of the works council told Der Spiegel that “we cannot go on like this” and called for a national round table involving politicians and corporate leaders. The context is dire: Mercedes is demanding unpaid overtime from workers, and Volkswagen has threatened to close four factories. The German auto sector — long the engine of European manufacturing — is confronting a structural crisis that goes far beyond any single company.
