Prime Minister highlights Autoeuropa’s importance in the development of Portuguese industry Portugal has the natural and human resources to lead the change in the automotive[...]

"With our natural resources, geographical position, and qualified human resources, we face the challenges [of electric mobility] in confidence", which will change the automotive industry, "strengthened by the experience that has been invested in our country in the past, and today you know our worth", said Prime Minister António Costa at the ceremony to celebrate Autoeuropa's 30th anniversary.

António Costa the Volkswagen group's board for "the confidence given as to Autoeuropa's future" - the company will invest 500 million euros in the next five years - "at this trying time of transition in the automotive industry, due to the progress of electric vehicles and the need to decarbonize the economy to contain climate change".

The Prime Minister recalled that "Autoeuropa wasn't only the largest foreign direct investment in Portugal, it had and has had a deeply transformative potential on our economy, as it represents 6% of exports and has produced and exported more than double what it did 30 years ago".

Autoeuropa's presence has allowed the development of a "true automotive cluster that helped to create a wide range of companies that work for Autoeuropa, as well as others that, from what they learnt by working for Autoeuropa, work for many other car manufacturers", a cluster that accounts for 7% of GDP.

Reindustrializing Europe

The Prime Minister underlined that the pandemic "taught us all that Europe excessively relocated its industrial capacity to produce components that are fundamental to its industrial activity".

"We cannot have value chains as long or as incomplete within the European Union, so Europe must undertake a huge effort to reindustrialize, producing here what was relocated to other geographies" he said, giving the example of semiconductors, whose delivery delays caused huge constraints on European industry production.

Accordingly, "one of Europe's major efforts, and one where Portugal may play a leading role, is to produce in Europe and Portugal many of the components we import today", he claimed.

Resources for the new mobility

As such, "we look on with attention and confidence at the challenges of electric mobility and connected, decarbonized to electricity moved mobility, or green hydrogen".

The Prime Minister underlined that Portugal "has the natural resources to hold a strategic position in this new mobility: the lowest price of solar power in the world", "conditions for green hydrogen hydrolysis", starting with the sea, and "the largest lithium reserve in Europe and eighth at a global level".

"These conditions optimize our country as a place for activities and transformation where these resources are decisive. We also "have the human resources and we can proudly say that only Austria and Germany have a higher engineering graduates' rate in the European Union", he noted.

Qualification

António Costa recalled that the "country Autoeuropa found 30 years ago has evolved extraordinarily with regard to qualifications. Today we have four times more graduates than we did 20 years ago".

"At the time, Portugal had around 20% of the population with a secondary education certificate and today, it's more than 89%. At the time there was only one track in secondary schooling and today it has a secondary education system with different intercommunicating tracks that offer solid academic and vocational training", working in this field "with the specificities that are proper to the regional corporate fabric", he stated.

The Prime Minister claimed that "it's not by chance that within the VW group, Autoeuropa always has the best qualifications of all the group factories", and congratulated all those who, over the past 30 years, have made and still make Autoeuropa.