Volkswagen, Germany's largest carmaker, reported a net loss of 5.82 billion euros for the July to September quarter, the company announced on Thursday, 29 October. The result comes as the group is in the middle of a far-reaching reorganisation designed to cut costs and improve operational efficiency.
The company has set itself the goal of reducing costs across the whole group by 20 percent by the end of 2028. Volkswagen says it has already achieved savings worth tens of billions of euros, but its financial difficulties persist.
The restructuring carries heavy consequences for employees. At the end of 2024, management and employee representatives agreed to gradually eliminate, through socially acceptable measures, more than 35,000 positions at the main VW brand in Germany by 2030. The plan also includes reducing production capacity at German plants. In early September, the supervisory board approved extending the restructuring worldwide, targeting about 50,000 additional jobs, including management positions.
Several major German production sites face an uncertain future. Volkswagen's plants in Emden, Zwickau and Hanover, as well as Audi's factory in Neckarsulm, have no certain prospects for competitive production programmes after 2030 or in the years that follow. Group leadership points to surplus production capacity on the European market as the reason the industrial footprint must be reshaped.
Volkswagen is also grappling with several difficulties at once: weak sales performance in China, the effects of American tariff policy and intensifying global competition. These challenges complicate the company's recovery strategy and add pressure on chief executive Oliver Blume.
For Romania, the fortunes of the German group matter because the local car industry is closely tied to European manufacturers, particularly through supplier networks for components. The scale of Volkswagen's restructuring underlines the difficulties facing the European car industry as a whole.