The German government under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with representatives of Fiat and Magna in Berlin today in another attempt to thrash out Opel's future after the last round of intensive talks ended in failure just two days ago.

Those talks collapsed in the early hours of Thursday morning after GM demanded additional liquidity for Opel over and above the 1.5 billion euro bridging loan that the government had agreed after the meeting had actually got underway. Reportedly at a figure of between 300 and 500 billion euros, and a sum that will have to be paid back by the new owners of Opel, the very late timing of the request deeply angered German government ministers as well as what it perceived was a lack of support from the U.S. government for a trustee to be appointed if as is expected GM files for bankruptcy today.

The path to a swift resolution was muddied further still yesterday as the EU said that it would take a look at the Opel deal after receiving a formal letter of request to intervene from the Belgian premier. "The Commission will organise a meeting of ministers of industries from member states on the issue of Opel. No date has been set but it would be soon," the EU's  enterprise and industry spokesman Ton Van Lierop said yesterday. Belgium is fearful that the Opel factory in Antwerp would suffer closure as the German government - which is set to provide the bulk of state aid to the successful bidder - demands that jobs aren't lost at Opel's four factories in Germany. Redundancies are a sensitive issue to the government with a national election looming later this year. It is believed that Magna revised its bid after the submission date to switch some of its planned cuts in Germany to the Belgian plant.

Meanwhile GM Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz poured cold water on Marchionne's open ambitions to acquire the American carmaker's profitable operations in Latin America and South Africa. Fiat has been casting an envious eye over these divisions but has said it will wait until the Opel deal is decided one way or another before pursuing this interest further. However Lutz said during a programme in Detroit yesterday that GM wouldn't part with these operations, or its Asia-Pacific businesses, instead it would only be shedding GM Europe's Opel, Vauxhall and Saab brands from its global portfolio.

Also yesterday Magna's co-CEO Don Walker threw up the possibility of co-operating with Fiat in the future saying at a conference in Ontario that "if there's a win-win, then there's always room for collaboration." The Austro-Canadian car components manufacturer is going head-to-head with Fiat in a bid to wrest control of Fiat and is the favoured bid of Opel's powerful unions as well as some regional political leaders. "If you look at all the car companies, whether they're willing to work on sharing engine technology, transmission technology, sharing a platform," Walker told Reuters when asked if a Fiat-Magna collaboration was a possibility, "I think there'll be more and more sharing of platforms, and they'll do more of the marketing. So, never say never," he added.