2 days ago
How can the EU respond to companies moving their production elsewhere?
German BSH Domestic Appliances group, which owns the Siemens and Bosch brands, has announced the forthcoming closure of a factory in Esquíroz in the north of Spain.
More than 650 local jobs are likely to be lost, and production could be relocated to Poland or Turkey.
"The situation is really very worrying. This was a company that had proved to be sustainable, a company that had a product that provided services to the rest of Europe and also to Spain, because 80% of the products that came out of this company were then marketed in Spain," Spanish MEP Estrella Galán said.
"And now the company has decided to close because of relocation," she added.
This is not an isolated case. Relocations are also under way at Audi, Volkswagen and ArcelorMittal.
Some MEPs would like the European Parliament to take action to combat deindustrialisation and support the re-industrialisation of Europe, at a time when geopolitical uncertainties are undermining businesses.
"We have political instability, we have high energy prices, we have economic uncertainty, we have Donald Trump's tariff war," Oihane Agirregoitia Martínez, another Spanish MEP for Renew Europe, told Euronews.
"In this case, we have a lack of strategic autonomy. These companies are looking for lower labour costs, they are looking for access to raw materials", Agirregoitia Martínez explained.
She recommends simplifying the regulatory and tax framework to support production, innovation and competitiveness in Europe.
For her part, Galán is calling for the 25-year-old European directive on collective redundancies to be updated to bring it into line with the "new realities of the labour market".
"Within the European Union, we cannot compete between states on the basis of the wage levels that exist in one member state or another," she told Euronews.
"It is therefore necessary to reform this directive on collective redundancies and prevent social dumping from being a threat to all workers in the European Union", she adds.
Between 2018 and 2020, 72% of French companies that relocated did so in Europe, according to the French national statistics institute (INSEE).
The 21-year-old gunman who went to his former school in Graz on Tuesday and shot 10 people dead and injured a further 11 had carefully planned his rampage in advance.
That's according to a statement by the public prosecutor's office and the police at a press conference on Thursday.
During a search of his house, investigators found a non-functional pipe bomb, notes and plans. According to police, the pipe bomb contained all the components.
His notes express regret that he did not have time to properly finalise his plans.
A farewell letter was also among the items found, but according to investigators, it does not provide any further information about the perpetrator's motive and reads more like an apology to his family.
Investigators also revealed that the young man, who lived with his mother, had lived a secluded life.
He was reportedly introverted, withdrew mainly into the virtual world where his main social contact came from and played first-person shooter games.
Three years ago, he dropped out of school without graduating. The 21-year-old had no criminal record.
Michael Lohnegger, the head of the Styrian state police, explained that the perpetrator entered the school on Tuesday at 9:43 am. He was carrying a rucksack containing a Glock 19 pistol, a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun and ammunition.
He went to the school toilet on the third floor, put on a gun belt, shooting glasses and a headset. There were 400 pupils in the school at the time.
The gunman, then heavily armed, went to the second floor and shot indiscriminately at people there and at 10:07 am went back to the third floor toilet where he shot himself.
The first police patrol arrived at the school at 10:06 am, by which time the rampage was over and the gunman already dead.
Investigators assume that the 21-year-old did not know the young people he shot, although the teacher who was killed had taught at the school at the time the gunman was a pupil there.
The police investigation is still ongoing, with a laptop and a USB stick still to be analysed.
So far, there are no concrete clues as to the motive for the shooting.
