Millions due to Disney
“Global Dream”: A rude awakening for taxpayers
By Lutz Meier
11/20/2022, 4:15 p.m
Despite all the relief: For German taxpayers, the “Global Dream” will be an expensive loss. Because part of the high guarantees from the federal government and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is now due to the buyer Disney.
The ship was the pride of an entire region: The “Global Dream”, the world’s largest cruise ship with space for 10,000 passengers, has been lying idle in Wismar’s huge shipbuilding hall for ten months. The ship, which has often been dubbed “Global One,” is 80 percent complete, with Chinese dragons, characters and astronauts on the hull. Actually, vacationers from China should have been sailing across the seas for a long time. But at the beginning of this year, the dream was over – after the cruise slump in the Corona pandemic, the shipping company Dream Cruises and its Malaysian mother slipped into bankruptcy. And her German shipyard group with locations in Bremerhaven, Wismar, Rostock and Stralsund (MV Werften) with her.
Since then, the giant ship has been lying motionless in the water. For a long time it looked like it was just waiting there to be scrapped. Who should start with the barge, in the middle of the cruise lull. But now it’s clear: the shipyard workers in Wismar, the suppliers and all the enthusiastic people in the region in western Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, they can all continue to dream their dream. On Thursday, bankruptcy administrator Christoph Morgen said at the shipyard that the Disney group would take over “Global One”.
Conversion and completion in Wismar
The US entertainment group maintains a large cruise department. And here, as elsewhere, business has picked up again faster than planned. In addition, one can assume that Disney can take over the ship particularly cheaply in its fleet. Both sides – the insolvency administrator and Disney – are silent about the price that the Americans are paying. But the fact that it is well below the approximately 1.3 billion euros that the owner, who went bankrupt, has set, can probably be taken for granted.
And the Wismar shipyard workers will finish the ship according to the plans and convert it to Disney’s needs. The Papenburg Meyer shipyard, which has long been experienced in cruise ship construction, is to take over this task – but the work is to be done at the Wismar shipyard. The Meyer shipyard will loan the Wismar shipyard for two years, so to speak.
In fact, the insolvency administrator Morgen had long since sold the shipyard – it is going to the Kiel-based submarine builder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), which wants to build warships here. Even this sale was a stroke of luck for the region, because after the bankruptcy there was also a dissolution of the shipyard in the room. But the new demand for armaments as a result of the Russian attack on Ukraine ultimately benefited the shipbuilders in Wismar. Only the question was not clarified what should happen to the ship until the initially planned arrival of TKMS in Wismar in 2023 or 2024 that the shipyard construction hall is still blocked. There is now a solution for that.
It will be expensive for taxpayers
“Everyone is relieved that the ship will set sail with a new design and climate-friendly propulsion and will not have to be scrapped,” said Daniel Friedrich from the IG Metall coast district. Insolvency administrator Morgen is therefore facing a successful interim balance: He has sold the main assets of MV Werften to new owners who want to keep jobs and are still active in the maritime industry. All this still seemed quite utopian when the biggest German shipyard bankruptcy in decades was reported at the beginning of the year.
Despite all the relief: For German taxpayers, the “Global Dream” will be an expensive loss. Because the federal government and the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania had each guaranteed three-digit million sums for loans to complete the ship. A portion of these guarantees will become due after the sale to Disney. It is not yet possible to quantify how high the costs for public budgets are.
The article first appeared at Capital.de.