Katherina Reiche, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, attends the 13th session of the German Bundestag. J\u00f6rg Carstensen\/dpa <\/p>\n
The German government’s investment in the crisis-hit Swedish electric vehicle battery manufacturer Northvolt was “mistaken,” Economy Minister Katherina Reiche told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The decision by her predecessor, Robert Habeck, to fund the construction of a Northvolt plant in northern Germany was taken “with good intentions,” Reiche said, but was wrong.<\/p>\n
According to media reports, the Federal Audit Office is accusing Habeck of having allocated taxpayers’ money to Northvolt far too carelessly and of underestimating the economic risks.<\/p>\n
The company filed for insolvency in Sweden in March.<\/p>\n
The fate of its site near Heide, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, is unclear.<\/p>\n
Northvolt has received around \u20ac600 million from Germany’s KfW state development bank for the construction of the site, with an additional \u20ac20 million spent on interest and procedural costs.<\/p>\n
The European Commission also approved direct subsidies totalling \u20ac700 million in early 2024, although the money has not been paid out.<\/p>\n
The government’s decision to invest in the Northvolt site was linked to a report from consulting firm PwC from June 2023, which has been seen in redacted form by dpa.<\/p>\n
The document shows that the auditors considered repayment of the government investment, including interest, to be “plausible.”<\/p>\n
Northvolt’s battery cells were seen as having high sales potential, but the report warned that the company was dependent on external investment to cover expenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katherina Reiche, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, attends the 13th session of the German Bundestag. J\u00f6rg…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[84987,2000,299,36832,8387,1824,84986,1197,82583,81810,57473,84988,12348],"class_list":{"0":"post-213583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-electric-vehicle-battery","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-german-bundestag","12":"tag-german-government","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-government-investment","15":"tag-investment","16":"tag-katherina-reiche","17":"tag-northern-germany","18":"tag-northvolt","19":"tag-parliamentary-committee","20":"tag-robert-habeck"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114744951022513255","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}