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By Aoife White,George Frey, The Associated Press

FRANKFURT, Germany – Opel workers are ready to help cut costs as GM moves to restructure its troubled European operations, Opel’s chief employee representative said Friday.

European workers are prepared to make concessions that could save General Motors Co. US$398 million annually, employee council head Klaus Franz said after meeting GM’s top official in Europe, Nick Reilly at Adam Opel GmbH’s headquarters in Ruesselsheim.

Franz did not elaborate.

Unions and employees had offered cost-cutting concessions to ease the sale of a majority in Opel and sister brand Vauxhall to a consortium led by Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc. (TSX: MG-A.TO) However, that offer – which included forgoing pay increases – was taken off the table after GM decided last month to scrap the sale.

Reilly said he still expects the company to cut some 9,000 jobs across Europe and that a decision on which plants would close or shed workers would come in late December or early January – later than a mid-December deadline it had earlier mentioned.

Reilly was also named president of GM Europe on Friday. He previously served as the president of GM International Operations and has been working in recent months on restructuring GM’s European business.

“We’ve got to take our overall costs down, we’ve got to take some of our capacity out,” he told reporters in Brussels later in the day after meeting European Union economy ministers. “We think if we do implement this plan, we can survive.”

GM is asking EU governments to help pay most of the euro3.3 billion it says it needs to restructure the company. Reilly said he gave ministers confidential information about product lines and investment in new technology to show how GM could return to profitability.

The company did not tell European governments where it planned to make cuts, nor did ministers say how much they might be willing to pay the company in loans or grants.

German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said Reilly told them that GM wanted to put only 20 per cent of its own money toward the restructuring costs. He was critical of this, saying he thought General Motors “has a lot of resources.”

EU Economy Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said European governments where GM makes cars had agreed to hold off granting financial help to the company until they checked with the EU’s executive commission that it wouldn’t harm competition.

He said EU regulators would judge whether the restructuring plan was “economically viable and whether or not in the long-term it safeguards the competitiveness of the company.”

Belgium and others had complained about reports that Germany had offered huge loans to a potential buyer for Opel earlier this year in return for a pledge not to cut German jobs – a move that would likely have seen closures of more efficient plants elsewhere in Europe.

Sweden’s enterprise minister Maud Olofsson told reporters before the meeting that EU countries wanted to decide together on subsidies and “will not allow GM to go to each and every country to negotiate about state aid … because that’s not fair.”

She also said EU nations are urging GM to invest in more fuel-efficient cars “because that gives us a golden opportunity in Europe to be competitive.” Sweden led the talks as the current holder of the rotating EU presidency.

Opel and Vauxhall employ around 48,000 people in Europe, about half of them in Germany. Franz said that 548 engineering jobs at the plant in Ruesselsheim, Germany, which were previously in question are now secure.

Olofsson said the Swedish government was “working very hard to get a new buyer” for GM’s Saab unit after a takeover by sports car maker Koenigsegg Automotive AB fell through. She said a new buyer “needs to have lots of money and a strong business plan.”

GM says it will phase out the brand – with the loss of up to 4,500 jobs – if it can’t sell the company by the end of month. Chinese company Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings has expressed interest but has not made a bid.