By John Reed in London, Nikki Tait in Brussels, and Daniel Schäfer in Frankfurt

European government officials said they expected General Motors to outline a strategy for its Opel unit within days, and made plans to discuss the re­structuring in depth in the first week of December.

After a meeting organised by the European Commission, European Union industry ministers said they had “agreed to continue the political discussion” about Opel in the context of the bloc’s competitiveness council, which is due to meet on December 3 and 4. Kris Peeters, premier of Belgium’s Flanders region, where GM’s Antwerp plant is located, said he expected the Detroit automaker to present its plan for its European arm by the end of this week.

Other governments with GM plants, including Britain’s, are also pressing the US carmaker for details of its business plan before pledging loans or guarantees to finance Opel’s bailout. GM says it needs €3.3bn ($4.9bn) to restructure Opel and fund investment in new products, some of which it says it will fund itself.

GM has not yet given details of where it plans to cut 9,000 to 10,000 jobs as part of a plan to reduce its capacity in Europe by 20 to 25 percent.

Nick Reilly, GM’s head of international operations, who is temporarily running Opel, said last week that a restructuring plan would be ready by mid-December. At yesterday’s meeting, Neelie Kroes, the EU’s industry commissioner, said European state aid rules needed to be respected in any Opel restructuring, and that financial support by any member state should be based strictly on objective and economic criteria.

Brussels said the gathering had “reconfirmed the need for European coordination”.

A warning by Ms Kroes over illegal state aid played a key role in derailing GM’s plan to sell Opel to Magna International with €4.5bn of mostly German government aid, which the US carmaker’s board shelved on November 3.

Reilly said yesterday that the implementation of any restructuring plan would be “based on economic criteria and not be impacted by any government’s decision to what extent they support the plan”. Rainer Brüderle, Germany’s new economics minister from the liberal FDP party, has repeatedly ruled out state loans to restructure Opel, although it remains unclear whether this view is supported by the CDU, his party’s larger coalition partner.