Volkswagen’s next EV decides Europe’s factory jobs

Volkswagen's supervisory board meets Friday to decide whether CEO Oliver Blume gets a mandate for the deepest restructuring in the company's history. The vote matters because future electric-car production will decide which European plants keep work across at least four member states.

Why Blume Has Leverage

The financial pressure is real. Operating profit fell to €8.9 billion in 2025 from €19.1 billion the year before, on broadly flat revenue (Volkswagen 2025 results, CNBC). Blume told managers that overhead costs remain more than 30% above comparable companies (Yahoo Finance).

China made the squeeze worse. BEV deliveries there fell 44.3% in 2025 and another 63.8% in the first quarter of 2026 (VW deliveries 2025, VW Q1 2026). China used to absorb volume and profit for European carmakers. Now it exports competition instead.

An executive committee including the works-council chief, Lower Saxony's premier Olaf Lies, and members of the Porsche-Piëch shareholder families meets Thursday to test whether a deal is possible before the full board convenes (Investing.com/Reuters). That composition explains why this restructuring cannot just be ordered from above.

Volkswagen's governance splits power three ways. The Porsche-Piëch families hold 53.3% of voting shares. Lower Saxony, the state where Wolfsburg sits, holds 20% (VW Annual Report 2025). Workers hold half the supervisory board's 20 seats through co-determination (the German system that puts employee representatives on the board overseeing management). Under a special 1960 law, moving or establishing production sites requires a two-thirds board majority, which means labour plus Lower Saxony can block any plant decision (Gesetze im Internet, NWZ).

A December 2024 agreement already bars compulsory redundancies at German plants and keeps factories open until 2030 (Correctiv). Blume wants permission to go further: keeping plant closures as a live option and carving out underperforming divisions. The board can give or refuse that mandate. It cannot close a factory on Friday.

The Next EV Decides the Jobs

The restructuring that matters most is quieter than a closure vote. It is model allocation: which factory gets the next car, platform and production ramp. That decision locks in years of employment, supplier contracts and investment.

Czechia looks like a winner on paper. Škoda says its Czech factories run at full capacity, and analysts describe the brand as a cost champion that could absorb work shifted from expensive German sites (Newstream, Aktuálně). But Czech suppliers are already reporting order declines of tens of percent (Novinky).

Spain has a short-term shield. Martorell started producing the Cupra Raval and VW ID.Polo after a €3 billion conversion to electric (Cinco Días). But the works committee warns the factory cannot survive beyond 2030 without a second electric platform (El Nacional). That is the model-allocation logic in miniature: one car keeps a factory alive for five years, but only the next assignment keeps it alive after that.

Hungary's Audi plant in Győr matters because drivetrain allocation links Volkswagen's EV shift directly to Hungarian industrial output, where vehicle manufacturing accounts for 26.3% of all manufacturing (KSH). Győr won a €350 million investment for a new EV drivetrain programme last year (Audi MediaCenter).

The Belgian Audi Brussels closure showed what happens when a site loses this fight: unions and governments negotiated exit terms, but they could not force Volkswagen to send a new model (Trends-Tendances). As we reported, Volkswagen already faces possible multibillion-euro EU CO₂ fines over weak electric-car sales, which only increases the pressure to concentrate EV production in fewer, more efficient plants.

Where the Capacity Goes

German workers have the strongest legal protections and the weakest utilisation (how much of each factory's capacity is actually being used). Reuters-cited projections show German passenger-car plants falling from 81% utilisation in 2026 to 73% by 2030, with Zwickau dropping from 88% to 42% (MarketScreener/Reuters). Central European plants are cheaper and fuller, but their suppliers are already absorbing the downturn. Eurofound finds that since 2022, auto suppliers have announced more job losses than manufacturers themselves (Eurofound).

Friday's board can give Blume the political mandate to restructure. But workers across four countries will learn their real fate only when Volkswagen assigns future EV models, plant by plant, over the months and years ahead. Which factories get those cars remains open, and Volkswagen's governance guarantees that every assignment will be fought over before it is settled.