Chancellor says crisis won’t hurt Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she does not think that the Volkswagen emission scandal will hurt Germany’s image in the long-term.
The chancellor admitted that the emission fraud committed by the car manufacturer was ‘dramatic’, but said that the industry in Germany overall will be affected.
‘It is, of course, a dramatic event which is not good,’ she said. ‘But I think the reputation of German industry… is not so shaken that we are no longer considered a good place to do business.’
Manufacturing accounts for 22% of the country’s GDP and is a vital industry for its labour force. Although the sector will continue to strive after the VW scandal, it is thought that German stockmarket DAX has been weighed down by the plummeting share price of the carmaker.
The company accounts for around 14% of the total value of shares listed on the German DAX, which has lost a total of $400bn (£264bn) since April. The suspicions surrounding the emissions fraud surfaced at the beginning of September and since then, Volkswagen has seen its share price fall by almost 40%.
The Chancellor continued to state that she hoped Volkswagen would quickly create transparency and sort things out.
