The automotive industry – a blessing in the coal and steel crisis

Today, there are more than 40,000 jobs attached to the automotive industry in Saarland. Nowhere else is dependence on the car more marked, and nowhere else does the decarbonisation being striven toward constitute such an existential challenge.

Because of the steel industry, connections were made with the automotive industry early on. The Röchling ironworks, for example, was already making springs for Opel in Rüsselsheim in the 1920s. After 1945, France relocated some of its factories to Saarland from the French occupied zone. These companies produced for the French car manufacturers.

Between 1965 and 1973 numerous automotive suppliers such as ZF settled in Saarland. Ford's decision to erect a works in Saarlouis in 1965 had a magnetising effect. Saarland thus underwent a kind of development that was typical of the structural change in mining areas, scoring with its location – right in the middle of the European Economic Community (EEC) – and with workers who were used to doing shifts.

At the time, this settlement by members of the automotive industry was considered an effective recipe for mitigating the mining crisis and, from 1975, the demise of the ironworks too. Firms such as Ford, and later ZF, compensated for the job losses. In 1983, automotive manufacturing became the sector with the biggest turnover on the Saar.

Now, the automotive sector is heading into a transformation crisis. With the end now having come for Ford in Saarlouis, well over 5,000 jobs are being lost in one fell swoop.