Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

EMPLOYMENT

Young Euro engineers want work in Germany

German companies made up half of the top-10 most sought after employers for European engineering students in a survey published on Wednesday.

Published: 10 June 2015 15:45 CEST
Young Euro engineers want work in Germany
A Bosch worker at an automated production line. Photo: DPA

Although IBM pipped Siemens out of its 2014 first-place ranking, BMW, Airbus, Bosch and Daimler/Mercedes-Benz loaded the rest of the leaderboard with German quality.

But it wasn't just German companies' reputation for high-quality products that made them leading choices for the future engineers and IT workers.

“Top employers are the ones that have made professional development the top thing on their agendas, and offer a creative and dynamic work environment too,” said Claudi Tattanelli, Global Director of labour market research firm Universum.

That might mean that the likes of Volkswagen, Bayer or BASF have some investing in their workforce to do to move up in the attractiveness stakes, after they placed 23rd, 24th and 26th respectively.

And Germany as a whole has some catching-up to do when it comes to the business side of the equation, where not a single German company was among the top 10 employers picked by undergraduates.

BMW was the top-placed German entrant at 13th, with others such as adidas, Deutsche Bank, Daimler/Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen peppering the high teens and 20s.

“Business students prefer professional training and development, challenging work and opportunities for international travel/relocation,” Universum said in a press release.

The Universum survey asked 168,000 business and engineering or IT students in the 12 biggest European economies about their preferred companies and workplace environment.

SEE ALSO: Graduates desperate to work for car giants

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

FARMING

WTO rules US tariffs on Spanish olives breach rules

A US decision to slap steep import duties on Spanish olives over claims they benefited from subsidies constituted a violation of international trade rules, the World Trade Organisation ruled Friday.

Published: 22 November 2021 11:34 CET
WTO rules US tariffs on Spanish olives breach rules
Farmers had just begun harvesting olives in southern Spain when former US President Donald Trump soured the mood with the tariffs' announcement. Photo: Jorge Guerrero/AFP

Former US president Donald Trump’s administration slapped extra tariffs on Spain’s iconic agricultural export in 2018, considering their olives were subsidised and being dumped on the US market at prices below their real value.

The combined rates of the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties go as high as 44 percent.

The European Commission, which handles trade policy for the 27 EU states, said the move was unacceptable and turned to the WTO, where a panel of experts was appointed to examine the case.

In Friday’s ruling, the WTO panel agreed with the EU’s argument that the anti-subsidy duties were illegal.

But it did not support its stance that the US anti-dumping duties violated international trade rules.

The panel said it “recommended that the United States bring its measures into conformity with its obligations”.

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis hailed the ruling, pointing out that the US duties “severely hit Spanish olive producers.”

Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid, called by the olive sector
Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid called by the olive sector to denounce low prices of olive oil and the 25 percent tariff that Spanish olives and olive oil faced in the United States. (Photo by PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP)
 

“We now expect the US to take the appropriate steps to implement the WTO ruling, so that exports of ripe olives from Spain to the US can resume under normal conditions,” he said.

The European Commission charges that Spain’s exports of ripe olives to the United States, which previously raked in €67 million ($75.6 million) annually, have shrunk by nearly 60 percent since the duties were imposed.

The office of the US Trade Representative in Washington did not immediately comment on the ruling.

According to WTO rules, the parties have 60 days to file for an appeal.

If the United States does file an appeal though, it would basically amount to a veto of the ruling.

That is because the WTO Appellate Body — also known as the supreme court of world trade — stopped functioning in late 2019 after Washington blocked the appointment of new judges.

SHOW COMMENTS