If VW, Kia, PSA, or Jaguar Land Rover: Now have included all of the car manufacturers in their factories in Slovakia, the production again. The Central and Eastern European state shone in the Corona-crisis anyway with a comparatively low infection numbers. Early on, the government in Bratislava has closed the borders and around five and a half commits million Slovaks already in the middle of March to the Wearing of a mouth guard.
Niklas Zimmermann
volunteer.
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As a sample of students, Slovakia is also true in terms of economic growth. Since 1998, the authoritarian Prime Minister Vladimír Meciar was forced to cede, has increased five-fold, the gross domestic product (GDP) almost. The prosperity has grown in this period is stronger than in the neighboring States of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The recovery goes back to the liberal economic policy from 1998 to 2006, acting Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda, who described the automotive industry as “the engine of the Slovak economy” and by means such as a Flat Tax into the country, attracted. The favor of the car maker his social democratic successor, Robert Fico campaigned, as well, in spite of its sometimes on the left of populist rhetoric.
a Strong decline in the GDP, expected
Now dark clouds over the Tatra mountains, but. The short-term stop in production, and from March to April to one and a half percentage points to 6.57 per cent increase in the unemployment rate could be the harbingers of a larger thunderstorm. “We are totally dependent on the global demand,” said Radovan ?urana of the Institute for economic and social studies in Bratislava. Because of the global auto market collapsed with the pandemic greatly, the pain, the Slovakia as a country with the world’s highest Per capita production of vehicles. ?urana speaks of the “great uncertainty”. According to forecasts, in the current year, 30 percent fewer automobile sales than in 2019. That alone would push the Slovak GDP to 4 percent. In addition, the production was to restart still far below their capacity. In the supply chain of the components are missing still.
with The automotive industry in Slovakia do not belong only to the plants of Volkswagen in Bratislava, PSA and Jaguar Land Rover in Trnava and Nitra in the West Slovakia and Kia in the Northern Slovakia’s Žilina. Six times more workers than the production facilities employ ?urana, according to the suppliers. Alone Schaeffler as the fourth-largest employer in Slovakia and has around 10000 employees. VW is around 14600 Work the number One in the country.
Just smaller suppliers are struggling in the crisis of Survival. In mid-may of the specific ceramic and metal parts specialized Austrian group Miba notified as a precaution, the termination of 192 of 1024 employees of the plant in Dolný kubín in the North of Slovakia. “This does not mean that we will terminate 192 employees,” says Miba-speaker Wolfgang Chmelir. The prior information notice is prescribed by law. The expectations of the Slovak government, the first since March in the office, however, are clear: “A short-time work model as we know it from Austria and Germany, would help in this Situation.”
The President sounds the Alarm
Because of the dependence of Slovakia from the car industry last Friday, President Zuzana ?aputová sounded the Alarm. You said in the Slovak Parliament: “The fact that Slovakia is a workshop of the global automotive market, we should look at it as a period of Transition, which had its advantages, but we need to get away from it by supporting the local business environment as a place of development, Innovation and modernization.” The goal of the President appears to be just with a view to the recent history understandable. Slovakia was once the Armory of the former “Eastern bloc”. With the fall of the Iron curtain 30 years ago, the weapons industry, but lost at a stroke their market. Mass unemployment and the dark Meciar-years followed.
