It is a bloodbath, the one announced on 10 March by Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume: 50,000 job cuts by 2030, including layoffs and redundancies that will also involve Audi, Porsche and the Cariad software division, in an operation that has more the flavour of surrender than of corporate reorganisation.

Not the first downsizing for the Wolfsburg-based group, whose profits and operating profit have halved, in its worst year since the Dieselgate scandal in 2015. Just two years ago, in fact, the company – which continues to be the most indebted non-financial company in the world – had been forced to plan a reduction of 35,000 employees by 2030 in its German sites alone, in order to avert the closure of some historical factories at home.

Trump’s tariffs, Chinese competition; all undeniable explanations, which are nevertheless an effect, not a cause, of the queen motivation: the inexorable loss of competitiveness of an entire sector on a continental scale, the drama of a market that, even with all its scourges, ‘generates 8% of Europe’s GDP every year and employs 13 million workers’.

These are numbers recalled by Blume himself in his open letter to Europe in February, written four-handedly with Stellantis head Antonio Filosa – the umpteenth for the automotive top brass.

In the missive, the two managers call for ‘smart incentives’, ‘public procurement’, ‘subsidies’, ‘labelling of Made in Europe’, without, they claim, demanding the erection of a ‘protectionist barrier’ around the sector. In short, a sort of compensation for being constantly exposed to ‘competition from importers operating under less stringent regulatory and social conditions than in the EU’, alluding to a forced and hasty energy transition and environmental standards that are difficult to comply with.

A well-known script, then, for which to blame them would be ungenerous, however, in view of the increasing and oppressive regulatory pressure – and sanctions – to which the EU has been subjecting their industry for at least two decades. On the other hand, the European motor industry has been undeniably taxed, then regulated, then fined, and now, brought to its knees, it is forced to beg – on pain of extinction – for favourable treatment from the very political class that has reduced it to the brink with its short-sightedness.

Blume and Filosa, we said, are neither the first nor the last four-wheel managers to implore Brussels not to remain deaf to the demands of the sector

In fact, a little less than two years ago – albeit in more markedly accusatory tones – it was Luca De Meo, at the time CEO of the Renault group, who grasped pen and paper to ask the European Commission to change course for the survival of the industry. Words to the wind, just like those impressed a few months later in Draghi’s report on the future of European competitiveness, in which the former Italian prime minister identified the governance of the sector as a ‘central example of a lack of planning on the part of the EU, which applies a climate policy without an industrial policy’: a short-sightedness such as to condemn the continent to ‘the radical relocation of production outside the EU or the rapid takeover of European plants and companies by foreign producers subsidised by the State’ – a reference that was anything but veiled to Chinese companies dedicated to dumping thanks to subsidies from Beijing.

De Meo, in his letter, tried to provide an order of magnitude of the regulatory siege to which Brussels subjects the sector, estimatingthat the Commission will introduce ‘8 to 10 new regulations per year’ until 2030 – emblematic of a regulatory construction site that is perpetually open. In November, to name but one, a part of the Euro 7 regulation will enter into force and will be adopted in full next year. In the meantime, the Commission has continued to produce packages and strategies that, despite the best declared intentions, give the profile of a governance model marked exclusively by legislative overproduction – as far from the certainty and predictability of decisions that an already highly regulated industry needs.

In this respect, the manager recalled, manufacturers allocate around 25 per cent of their R&D resources to the study of the application of European regulations alone.

If you calculate the entire amount spent by our automotive industry on R&D, in fact, you get the remarkable figure of 84.6 billion. These are the findings of Acea, the main association of European manufacturers, which estimates an outlay of 34% of all private R&D expenditure on the continent: no other sector invests as much.

By the way, De Meo further points out, the figure allocated between 2022 and 2024 to pursue the environmentalist chimera of Brussels, with its diktat on the total zeroing of net emissions by 2035, has reached 252 billion.

The chorus was joined at the beginning of March byMercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius, who also serves as president of Acea. In a clear and unequivocal statement, the leader of the German giant reiterated, like his colleagues before him, that ‘Europe must be able to find a better way to align its climate ambitions with the reality of business and global competitiveness’, on pain – he warned – of ‘losing its advantage, both as a place capable of attracting investment and as a location for industrial plants, with significant consequences for employment and innovation’.

On the subject of competitiveness, the cost of vehicles has risen by over 50% compared to 20 years ago,” De Meo recalls, “and the outcome on sales figures is blatant: in 2025 ,” Acea certifies, ” registrations in the EU will grow by just 1.8% and without yet recovering pre-pandemic levels. Car production – according to estimates for the first half of 2025 – is down 2.8% year-on-year, to just under 6 million units. But it is the employment drama that is the most bitter defeat: in the last two years, in fact, the entire industry has destroyed 100,000 jobs. This is calculated by Clepa – the European association of automotive component manufacturers – which also reports an increase to 44% in the number of redundancies due to closures and bankruptcies in 2025.

If Wolfsburg cries, Munich does not laugh

The crisis did not spare BMW either, which posted its worst results since the pandemic in terms of operating profit. Stuttgart also did badly, with Mercedes halving its profits. Also in the red was Stellantis, with a net loss of L22.3 billion. These are performances that attest to a condition that is now endemic. A common sickness for nothing gaudio, with the drab mitigation of the Green deal that, in terms of concrete relief, would seem to bring too little, too late.