The Italian government will set out measures to help the struggling auto industry “within 10 days,” a top minister said Wednesday following government talks with industry and union leaders in Rome.
The new measures will “promote car models with a low environmental impact” and will be “applicable immediately,” Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola was quoted as saying by Italian economic news agency RadioCor.
Coming out of the talks, the head of Italy's main union, the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), Guglielmo Epifani, who has been critical of government policy in the auto crisis, said: “There is no time to lose.”
New car sales fell 13.4 percent in Italy last year and automakers including industry leader Fiat, the country's top private employer with a domestic workforce of some 78,000, have resorted to temporary layoffs.
Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne, who has said 2009 will be “the toughest year ever” for the industry, has warned that some 60,000 jobs in the Italian auto sector as a whole were at risk unless the government steps up.
Around 400 Fiat workers rallied outside the government building in Rome where the talks on the crisis in the car industry were taking place.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who initially ruled out a rescue plan specific to the auto sector, called the roundtable meeting last week.
Under the plan being considered, with a price tag of between 260 million and 400 million euros (345 million to 530 million dollars), the government would pay out bonuses to people who dump their cars for new, less polluting models.
“Compared with the avalanche of money that other countries have released, the numbers I've heard won't help much,” Epifani said ahead of the talks.
He also said the CGIL union would not be satisfied with “stopgap measures.”
The scheme has also come under fire from the mayor of Turin, the northern Italian city that is the capital of the auto industry.
“I heard that they were talking about 300 million (euros), and that seems to me to be very little, given that (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy is putting up five billion in France,” said Sergio Chiamparino.
“At the international level, there's a problem of equality,” he said.
France last week pledged up to six billion euros to support automakers, Britain has proposed a 2.5-billion-euro rescue package and a German plan, similar to that proposed by Berlusconi, is worth 1.5 billion euros.
