STORY: The chemical giant BASF wants to respond to high energy prices and poor business prospects with severe cuts at the main plant in Ludwigshafen. 2,600 jobs will fall victim to the austerity measures worldwide, almost two-thirds of them in Germany, as the group announced on Friday. Several energy-intensive plants in Ludwigshafen are to be closed. CEO Martin Brudermüller sharply criticized the framework conditions in Europe, because the competitiveness of the European region would suffer from increasing over-regulation. In addition, there are slow and bureaucratic approval procedures and high production costs. As the largest industrial gas consumer in Germany, BASF suffered greatly from the increased energy and raw material costs last year. Brudermüller now wants to make the group weatherproof with a new annual savings program of 500 million euros, as he had already announced in October. BASF intends to achieve around half of this at the company’s headquarters in Ludwigshafen. The company employs around 39,000 of its 111,000 employees there.