VW board to accept Hartz resignation

Volkswagen’s supervisory board is set to accept the resignation of embattled personnel chief Peter Hartz after the board’s steering committee unanimously agreed he should go, VW board member Christian Wulff said on Wednesday.

Wulff said after a steering committee meeting that he had ‘‘no doubt’’ the full board would accept Hartz’s departure to take political responsibility for a bribery scandal at Europe’s biggest carmaker.

Hartz, 63, has a far higher profile in Germany than his job title suggests.

A confidant of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, he drafted the government’s much-debated proposal to overhaul the nation’s outmoded labour laws. The so-called Hartz Reforms are at the centre of a fierce political debate here — one that could push Schroeder out of office in elections this fall.