Everyone agrees on the diagnosis and treatment, but not on the steps to follow when applying it. The Volkswagen Group announced late Thursday after a meeting of its management leadership additional details of the plan on which it relies for its survival. According to the document made public by the company, an additional cut in employment of 50,000 employees until 2030 that is added to that of a similar magnitude already approved in 2024 and a simplification of models and brands that endangers the future of the historic Seat are its most notable and delicate points. Although the stock markets enthusiastically welcomed the spending cuts, the most complicated step still remains: defining who assumes the agreed sacrifices.
The body in charge of making important decisions within the group of German origin is the so-called Supervisory Board. In it, sit both the company's directors (CEO Olivier Blume, those responsible for the different geographical and operational areas, proprietary directors...) as well as representatives of the workers and the State of Lower Saxony, the bastion where the German group has its headquarters, its main factories and the region to which it is most closely linked.
As specified by Volkswagen itself, at the end of 2025, 31.9% of the company's shares were in the hands of the Porsche-Piëch families, descendants of the engineer who designed the Volkswagen Beetle and holders of 53.3% of the company's voting rights. 19.4% was owned by foreign institutional investors, 10.4% by the sovereign fund of Qatar and 11.8% of the total capital was owned by the State of Lower Saxony. This percentage allows the German Länder to have two seats on the supervisory board and 20% of the voting rights that give it the power to veto any initiative approved by the board or that passes through that supervisory board.
In addition to the corporate part, due to the German regulation known as the codetermination law, half of the seats on Volkswagen's supervisory board are occupied by worker representatives. This delegation is headed by the IG Metall union, and with 10 of the 20 seats in its possession, it completes the three pillars that together set the course of the automobile group: the Porsche-Piëch family, the State of Lower Saxony and the aforementioned union.
In its roadmap document, Volkswagen recognized that the productive capacity of its factories in Europe exceeds demand by more than 500,000 units. The Old Continent is called to be the place where the cuts are applied and, specifically, the manufacturer left four specific names. "The competitive capacity and production allocation to the factories in Emden, Zwickau, Hannover and Neckarsulm cannot be guaranteed between 2031 and 2034," reads the statement. In these four factories, 53,505 people work, according to data from Bloomberg and Volkswagen itself.
With two of the aforementioned plants located in Lower Saxony, those in Hannover and Emden, Olaf Lies, the Minister of Economy of Lower Saxony, stated after the publication of the plan that he does not fully share part of the roadmap. “If we have to reduce capacities, the conclusion cannot automatically be that we reduce them in Germany,” he commented. The federal government representative for East Germany, Elisabeth Kaiser (SPD), said that no plants in East Germany can be affected, in defense of the Zwickau factory.
Already in Spain, the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, promised this Friday that his government will do “everything in its power” to preserve jobs and Catalan industry. In Martorell, some 12,000 employees of the German group manufacture the Volkswagen ID.2, the Cupra Raval and three models of the Seat brand, now with a more uncertain future than ever: the Ibiza, the Arona and the León. Although the document did not specifically mention the historic brand, its non-electrified catalog and the lack of new models raise fears of its disappearance as a brand to make way for Cupra.
However, in statements to EFE, the president of the Seat committee, Matías Carnero (UGT), assured on Friday that he sees employment in the company "guaranteed until 2030" and appears "calmer about the future of the company", after the meeting of the Volkswagen supervisory board. According to Bloomberg data, another 2,500 group employees work in Catalonia in addition to those in Martorell, while the company also has a presence in Navarra with around 4,500 employees and in Sagunto with 3,300 dedicated to electric batteries.
Despite this lack of consensus on how to apply it, what has led to the common diagnosis and the relevance of shock treatment is the realization that the group does not carburize well. Since the highs set by Volkswagen in March 2021, the company has lost 72% of its value on the stock market, and this, despite the increases close to 10% that it has achieved in the last two sessions at the request of the promised cuts. Specifically, the Volkswagen Group was worth 147,902 million euros on March 17, 2021. At the close of last Friday, the company had a capitalization of 41,000 million euros. Challenges due to competition from Chinese manufacturers, costs that have choked margins, heavy investments in electrification, European regulation and declining profits are behind its debacle.
In 2021, the year in which it set record highs on the stock market, the Volkswagen Group delivered 8.82 million vehicles to its customers. Its income was 250,200 million euros with operating costs of 230,475 million. Its profits after taxes were 15,428 million. At that time, it employed 672,800 people. In 2025, the last year with complete results, the Volkswagen Group had a turnover of 321,913 million euros, but faced operating costs of 313,045 million that left its profits after taxes at 6,904 million. The company delivered 8.98 million vehicles and had 662,942 workers. This weakness was accentuated in the first half of 2026, with a decrease in vehicle deliveries of 6.3% compared to the same period in 2025, with profits after taxes of 3,103 million compared to 4,477 million in the previous comparable period of time.
"The main financial objective is an operating margin of 9% by 2030. This is equivalent to an operating result of 31,000 million euros, with 37,000 million euros as fixed or general costs and 135,000 million dedicated to investment in capital and R&D between the years 2027 and 2031," the statement planned. The hands that pilot Volkswagen agree on the need to change course and the goal to the one they want to reach, but how exactly to get to the destination they have set for themselves remains the great pending task.
