With a deal between GM and PSA for the sale of Opel possibly to be announced on Monday, a Spanish minister has said his country's assembly plants were "well-placed".
Economy minister Luis de Guindos made his remarks after speaking to an unnamed senior executive at PSA, Reuters reported.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Opel and PSA have three factories in Spain, which employ about 13,000 people in total.
The GM factory, near Zaragoza in the north, makes one of the new crossover models, jointly developed with PSA, to be unveiled at the Geneva show. The Opel/Vauxhall Crossland X replacement for the Meriva MPV is due on sale in May.
According to Reuters, De Guindos, in a radio interview, did not say if he'd requested guarantees for jobs and labour agreements.
"For the Peugeot group, if this merger ends up happening, Spain is going to be very important … and they are well aware of that," De Guindos told RNE radio. He sees the key factories as Zaragoza and the Peugeot plant in Vigo.
"They also raise another question, that the Spanish factories … are the most productive," de Guindos said, adding that Spain was "well-placed."
Unions sources told Reuters Spanish workers at the PSA and General Motors factories had expressed concern over the takeover talks in recent weeks.
Staff at PSA's smaller Villaverde factory in Madrid, where production is running at well below capacity, are especially worried, they told the news agency.
