Debrecen BMW plant construction reaches important milestone

Market Építő has completed buildings and infrastructure with a combined value of EUR 367m at the site of German car maker BMW’s new base in Debrecen (E Hungary), the Hungarian-owned construction company said on Thursday.

Market Építő completed four buildings at the site, including the 140,000sqm manufacturing hall. Market Építő has carried out eight projects at the base under contract from BMW Group and the municipality of Debrecen since 2019.

BMW laid the cornerstone of its plant in Debrecen in the summer of 2022. Production of the fully electric Neue Klasse is set to start there in 2025.

Illustration. Photo: MTI

Europe needs competitiveness turnaround, says minister

Europe needs a “competitiveness turnaround”, National Economy Minister Márton Nagy said ahead of a meeting of European Union ministers in charge of competitiveness in Brussels on Thursday. In a statement issued by his ministry, Nagy said the United States and China were ploughing large fiscal resources into the digital and green transitions, and the EU needed to catch up if it didn’t want the competitiveness gap to widen further.

At the Competitiveness Council on Thursday, ministers responsible for the internal market and industry will discuss the future of European competitiveness and better regulation to reduce bureaucracy. The European automotive and battery industries and the biotechnology sector are also topics on the agenda.

2025 year of ‘real’ action to improve competitiveness, minister adds

National Economy Minister Nagy said 2025 needed to be the year of “real activities” to improve European competitiveness after a meeting of the Competitiveness Council in Brussels on Thursday. After chairing the meeting of the ministers in its internal market and industry formation, Nagy warned that Europe’s loss of competitiveness had accelerated in recent years. He highlighted the Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal adopted at an EU summit in the Hungarian capital earlier in November and said it could spur economic growth and the start of the green and digital transitions.

Nagy said the internal market needed to be deepened, regulatory burdens reduced, and the business environment improved, especially for SMEs. Competitiveness must be based on productivity and innovation, not protectionism, he added. He said climate goals had to be harmonised with competitiveness targets, pointing to the debate over the challenges faced by Europe’s vehicle makers. He added that the EU had “rushed” its climate targets without adjusting them to an industrial strategy.

Nagy said the switch to electromobility would have to be made if 2035 climate targets could be achieved. The ministers, Nagy said, debated whether nuclear energy was zero-emissions or not, a definition key to nuclear power’s support from the EU budget.

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