Volkswagen announces drastic cuts plan: 60,000 more jobs, closure of four German factories and liquidation of Seat by 2029

MAGDEBURG – The Volkswagen supervisory board convened for today risked going down in history. The heaviest shareholders, i.e. the Porsche, Piech families and the Qatari fund, had prepared the bomb: the convening of an extraordinary meeting to force the hand, circumvent the veto power of the Land of Lower Saxony in the council and change the balance at the top forever. But last night IgMetall, Lower Saxony and the company managed to converge after a frantic day of negotiations on a new plan of cuts, tears and blood. A new massacre defined tout court, "survival" by the board of directors. The group, we read in the agreement voted unanimously, "is in a critical situation". And the supervisory board, brought forward by one day, launched a new, very tough recovery program.

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The crux of the plan is that 60,000 additional jobs will have to be eliminated, after the 50,000 already agreed upon not even two years ago. And the Seat brand will be completely liquidated by 2029. By killing the Iberian brand created in the 1950s at the behest of Fiat and the Spanish government, then sold to the Germans in the 1980s, VW intends to save costs, simplify processes and thus concentrate on its sister brand Cupra, which has long since overtaken Seat in terms of sales. According to data from Bild, which took up the news launched by Wirtschaftswoche, in the first half of 2026 170,100 Cupras were delivered, compared to 129,600 for Seat.

But on the most controversial issue, the four factories in Germany that the Wolfsburg giant had been threatening to cut since July, the overall objective remains to eliminate the production of 500 thousand vehicles in Europe. This means that the factories in Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm will close between 2031 and 2034, but only if huge savings have not been achieved by 2027. VW is committed to finding alternatives. And if necessary, it would be ready to consider new models to be assigned to the four factories. Speaking of models: half of them will be cut. Daniela Cavallo, head of the Volkswagen works council, therefore commented last night that "no plant has been sacrificed".

The point is that VW plans to sell only 9 million vehicles in 2030 - in 2019 there were still 11 million. And without the cuts, profit margins would collapse to 0.1%. Last Monday, chief financial officer Arno Antlitz left little hope for the four factories in Germany. And he said that current excessive capacities were creating a hole of 1.5 billion euros per year.

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