After a year of speculation and rumour, it was announced last week that the Opel Antwerp car factory will close, with the loss of 2,600 jobs. Parent company General Motors (GM) intends to close down production by June or July and then sell the land. But Flanders’ minister-president Kris Peeters said he was not prepared to accept the closure. The workers at Opel had demonstrated “that they are prepared to keep on fighting for a worthy alternative,” he said. “The Flemish government will support them completely. It is simply my duty to put my back into it.”

Opel chief executive Nick Reilly said that the decision had “not been taken lightly”. But it was, he said, “the unfortunate result of the current economic and business reality”. The decision had to be taken now in order to secure the future for other Opel and Vauxhall plants.

Antwerp is the only Opel facility earmarked for closure, although plants in Germany will see the loss of about 4,000 jobs. Across Europe, GM intends to cut 8,300 jobs. The European Works Council said the closure was “one-sided and economically unreasonable”.

The decision brings to an end a year of uncertainty for Opel Antwerp workers, whose future has been hanging in the balance since GM announced its restructuring plans, which involve a reduction of 20% in capacity in response to falling demand in the car industry. A glimmer of hope was offered by the planned purchase of 55% of Opel Europe by a consortium, including the Canadian parts maker Magna and the Russian bank Sberbank. That deal would have left GM holding 35% and the workforce 10%. But GM later decided Opel was part of its worldwide strategy after all, and the deal was off. Antwerp clung to the last to the possibility that it might take the production of a new small SUV planned by GM, which would replace the cut in Astra capacity at Antwerp. But the SUV will instead be produced in South Korea, GM said. Production of the three Astra models currently manufactured at Antwerp will be taken over in Bochum, Germany.

Unions, as well as the Flemish government, still maintain that the plant can be saved if another investor can be found – albeit not as a car manufacturing plant. “The socialist union does not accept the closure of Opel Antwerp and remains open to all possible alternative ways of keeping the business alive,” said Rudi Kennes of the ABVV trade union. Bringing Reilly to his knees, Kennes said, was “the ultimate goal”.

What’s next for workers?

“The closure of the Antwerp Opel factory is a drama for all employees and their families,” said Antwerp mayor Patrick Janssens. Under Belgian law – the so-called Renault law, introduced after the French car maker closed a factory at Vilvoorde in 1997 – GM now has to sit down with unions to work out a social plan for the job losses. The company has promised it will do all it can to help laid-off workers find new jobs.

However, the Renault law only covers the 2,600 workers at Opel itself. Another 2,500 to 7,500 people could find themselves out of work, according to different estimates. Agoria, the federation for the technology industry, estimates a total of 5,000 job losses, including suppliers and parts manufacturers. And the total number of job losses will be a blow for the economy of the whole area, resulting in as many as 10,000 jobs in all, according to Voka, which represents small businesses.

At Johnson Controls in Geel, the Opel closure means the end of the line. The company, which employs 220 people, makes car seats, and Opel Antwerp is its sole remaining client. Other suppliers, such as Plastic Omnium in Herentals and Belplas in Genk, both of which make bumpers, have other clients in other countries, but some effects will be felt. One of the biggest losers will be the rail authority NMBS, whose freight division Railforce turned over €2.4 million last year in traffic to Opel Antwerp.

"We fully understand the effect this announcement has on the Antwerp employees and their families, and we sympathise with them," said Reilly. "Many have been dedicated to the plant over generations and have done an excellent job producing great quality cars.”

• Flanders region stands ready with €500 million to help support any alternative plan to keep Opel Antwerp open, according to Flemish labour minister Philippe Muyters. Speaking on the VRT’s Sunday morning political programme De zevende dag, Muyters made it clear the financing that Flanders had set aside to aid GM in keeping Opel Antwerp open could still be used.

It also became clear over the weekend that Flanders is putting its hopes in the EU for a breakthrough in the case. Kris Peeters met last Friday with Commission president Jose- Manuel Barroso and obtained an assurance the Commission would give its full attention to the matter. Peeters maintains that aid given by the German government to GM, intended to protect its own Opel factories from closure, is against EU laws on state aid: the German government effectively paid for Opel Antwerp to be closed, the government maintains.

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