BMW has cancelled a leasing offer for the official car of the state parliament president in Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, on the day an Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician was elected to the post. No other major German manufacturer had bid for the contract.
The Landtag administration in Magdeburg confirmed to the newspaper Die Zeit that BMW’s headquarters withdrew the offer on October 6, the day deputies elected Tobias Rausch, 35, as president.
Rausch was chosen at the opening session of the chamber elected on September 6, a ballot the AfD won with 43.8 per cent and 39 of the 83 seats.
He is the first politician of the AfD to head a German state parliament. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution treats the party as a suspected case of right-wing extremism, after a court in Cologne in February barred the agency from calling it confirmed right-wing extremist.
A BMW spokesman told the paper: “The BMW Group does not generally comment on customer relationships.”
The company gave no reason, though German media have linked the move to the vote in Magdeburg.
Shortly before the withdrawal, BMW’s chief executive, Milan Nedeljković, had told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that right-wing populism and nationalism “are poison for an open business location that lives off world trade”, referring to the AfD.
BMW already supplies a large part of the fleet used by the Landtag and the state government, Tagesspiegel reported.
Rausch is for now using the BMW 7 Series of his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) predecessor, Gunnar Schellenberger, who held the office from 2021 to 2026.
The car has covered more than 50,000 kilometres in about nine months, Bild reported.
That lease ends in November. The president is entitled to an official car and a driver.
If the administration has not found a replacement by then, he will be without one.
The withdrawn BMW offer was the only bid from a well-known German manufacturer, the Landtag administration told German media.
Beatrix von Storch, deputy leader of the AfD’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag, responded on the evening of October 8 by asking Elon Musk on X, in English, whether Tesla would provide a car.
According to DIE ZEIT, BMW withdrew its offer of an official car after AfD politician Rausch was elected president of Saxony-Anhalt’s parliament.@elonmusk, would @Tesla be willing to provide him with an official car? pic.twitter.com/3CQ07lJNN2
— Beatrix von Storch (@Beatrix_vStorch) October 8, 2026
The withdrawal comes as BMW cuts staff and its shares trade at their weakest in a year.
The stock closed at about €52.30 on October 8, down roughly 44 per cent since the start of the year and more than a third over the past 12 months, a 52-week low.
The company said on July 29, alongside half-year results, that it would cut about 8,000 jobs worldwide, mainly in Germany, through voluntary redundancy and shrink divisions and senior management roles by a fifth by mid-2027. The severance offer runs to the end of 2027.
At a capital-markets day on September 30, Nedeljković told analysts the group was reshaping its structures and cost base to meet “increasingly fierce competition”.
BMW expects lower-than-expected profit margin due to weak sales.
The premium carmaker said it does not see a return to its previous profitability target of 8-10 per cent this year due to high raw material costs, new model rollouts and persistent weak demand in China, according… pic.twitter.com/qHUVr7Cifd
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 31, 2025
