OSNABRÜCK (dpa-AFX) - In view of high energy prices and excessive bureaucracy, the car industry sees production in Germany at risk. "In some cases, plants can only be kept in Germany because money is earned at locations abroad. We have a serious location problem," said the President of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), Hildegard Müller, to the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung" (Saturday). Jobs in Germany could only be maintained if energy became cheaper, raw materials were secured and bureaucracy was reduced.

Instead, the EU is going down special paths with the Supply Chain Act, for example, and piling up new bureaucratic hurdles. "The German government must also move from talk to action, otherwise the creeping deindustrialization can no longer be stopped because Germany cannot keep up with production costs," warned Müller. Berlin must put significantly more pressure on Brussels, conclude energy partnerships with Africa, the Middle East and Latin America as well as trade agreements. "We will not fail because we no longer build good cars. It's all about the framework conditions," said Müller.

The VDA President also called for the EU's punitive tariffs on Chinese e-cars to be withdrawn. Although the subsidies in China are a challenge, punitive tariffs are not a suitable means of protecting the industry. "There is a threat of countermeasures from China and a spiral of protectionism would probably hit Germany the hardest as an export nation." German manufacturers sell around 100 times as many cars in China as Chinese brands in Germany, Müller emphasized in an interview with the newspaper. Concerns about a flood of e-cars from the Far East are currently exaggerated. The talks that the EU Commission is holding with Beijing should be intensified, as there is room for maneuver.

With a view to the weakening market for e-cars, Müller once again called for a faster expansion of the charging infrastructure. "The most important thing to get e-mobility back on track in this country is charging points, charging points, charging points and grids, grids, grids!" In a good third of all municipalities, there is still no public charging point and almost three quarters of all municipalities have not yet installed a fast-charging point at all. Hauliers who wanted fast-charging points for their electric trucks were told by their network operators: "We'll manage that in six or eight years". The payment system also needs to be standardized and simplified so that users can charge at any charging point./hgo/DP/he