The European market will face two more years of contraction before recovery can begin, says Renault/Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Ghosn said rising unemployment would continue to drive down sales in Europe. "I think that 2014 and 2015 are going to be at best stable in Europe. More realistically we may see another decrease, not as deep as the one we've seen in the past two years, but I'm not very optimistic about the situation in Europe.
"We don't know what will be the trigger for new growth."
Ghosn says Renault/Nissan is trying to be "creative" in how it adapts its business operations, saying "I've never had the illusion that we will have a highway of restructuring in Europe. That's not going to happen. We're going to have to use other methods to adapt capacities and resources from all companies to adapt to the reality of the market."
Part of that creative thinking involves building the next Nissan Micra in France to use up excess capacity. Production of the next Micra is due to start in 2016.
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Renault and Europe
Renault 's own present would look rather bleak if it were not for the increasingly popular and impressively cheap Dacia sub-brand ramping up the parent company's sales.