Stellantis CEO Tavares should be ashamed - Salvini

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 12 - Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini said Saturday that Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares should be ashamed for saying car production in Italy was too expensive unless the government delivered fresh incentives for the sector.
    "The sector is in crisis in part because of him. The Stellantis CEO should be ashamed and apologise," Salvini said in Milan.
    "He is no longer in a position to ask for anything, given the way they have mismanaged a historic Italian company," he said of the company formed by the merger of Fiat-Chrysler with Peugeot.
    "The CEO and management of Stellantis should apologise to the workers, the engineers, the technicians, the Italians and the history of Italian car-making". Emanuele Orsini, the president of Italian industry association Confindustria, was critical too.
    "We need the production in Italy to be maintained," Orsini said at a Young Entrepreneurs event in Capri.
    "Asking for more incentives seems crazy to me to be honest.
    "We need serious industrial plans, companies that are serious about the country and that remain, of course, to build their products in our country".
    Italy's biggest trade union, the CGIL, called for the government to take action to end uncertainty about the future of Stellantis's plants in Italy.
    "The situation 'is dramatic' and direct intervention by premier's office is needed on Stellantis," CGIL Secretary General Maurizio Landini told Radio 24.
    "Stellantis has not been investing in recent years, not even in research and development, and production in 2024 will fall below 300,000 vehicles for the first time since 1957.
    "The company has only made cuts, shedding more than 12,000 jobs in recent years and also cutting back on research and development". (ANSA).