Germany bearing brunt of Opel job losses

Germany defended controversial state aid offered to the new Opel last Thursday, after Britain complained to EU competition watchdogs, by saying Berlin would bear the brunt of all European job losses.

"What we have done for Opel is good for all Europe (and) is good for Britain and Spain," said Peter Hintze, an economy minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government, three days before a German general election for which polls give her a solid lead.

"In absolute terms, Germany is absorbing the greatest number of job losses... more than Britain and Spain combined," said Hintze as he arrived for meetings with European Union counterparts in Brussels, where regulators are probing claims of a political carve-up.

He said Berlin's offer of €4.5 billion of state aid to Opel's planned new owners, Canadian auto parts group Magna and Russia's Sberbank, would also give Britain's sister company Vauxhall "a future".

Hintze said he would try to persuade colleagues from other countries that Germany's decisions were taken on "purely economic grounds".

Britain's Business Secretary Peter Mandelson - a former EU trade commissioner - has written to Brussels, arguing that Magna's plans for Opel's restructuring were too expensive and susceptible to "political intervention."