what does national interest mean anyway, when it coincides with business?
In a British context, it was well understood during the era of privatizations in the 1980s and ‘90s as a need for a degree of residual control over vital infrastructure such as reservoirs, power stations and airports and over vital supplies such as defence equipment: very few people argued against golden shares when the businesses concerned were floated or sold off. In the VW context, national interest has long been associated with protecting jobs which, it is feared, would migrate eastwards even quicker if VW passed into full private sector ownership (Porsche being the current stalker) or foreign ownership – which is much less likely, given Porsche already has a 31 per cent stake. VW is also a powerful icon of German industrial development, so there are emotional reasons why German politicians have sought to protect it from economic tides. Of these three strands of golden-share logic – security, protectionism, patriotic sentiment – the last two really have to be set aside in a globali
