EU blocks British car rescue package
17 December 1999
A British government package aimed at saving thousands of jobs at a major car manufacturing plant in Birmingham, Central England, has been blocked by the European Commission. The Rover car plant, at Longbridge, is owned by the German company BMW, and employs some nine thousand people.
But it has had a history of financial troubles and BMW threatened to close the Longbridge plant and transfer its work to Hungary. The Commission wants to investigate whether the one hundred and fifty-two million pounds aid package, offered by the British government to BMW earlier this year to keep the plant open, is against EU law. Correspondents say the dispute centres on whether the government broke EU competition law and on how serious BMW was about relocating to Hungary.
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