The federal state of Niedersachsen is located in the north-west of Germany. It shares borders to the west with the Netherlands and also with other German states: North Rhine-Westphalia to the south-west, Hesse and Thuringia to the south, Saxony-Anhalt to the east, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to the north-east, Bremen, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein to the north.

The federal state of Niedersachsen has a lot to offer. Not only does Germany’s second-largest state have cultural, scenic and traditional appeal, it has proven itself as a successful location for industry and commerce. Volkswagen AG located in Wolfsburg is Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer, having produced well over 50 million VW cars. The federal state of Niedersachsen has twice as many automobile-related jobs as the national average for Germany’s federal states. Agriculture plays a similarly important role. Nevertheless, to pigeon-hole Niedersachsen as an agrarian region is far from doing it justice. The Hannover Fair and the CeBIT computer show have turned the Hannover area into the world’s most important location for trade fairs. The federal state of Niedersachsen is home to several universities with a long and distinguished history and research departments which attest to the close interdependence between science and industry. You may even have pleasant memories of the federal state of Niedersachsen as host of the EXPO 2000 World Exposition.

The federal state of Niedersachsen offers a diversity of natural heritage and landscapes: appealing countryside between the Ems and Elbe rivers, between the mountain summits of the Harz National Park and the maritime climate of the North Sea. The federal state of Niedersachsen is committed to nature conservation: more than 20 % of the state’s area has been designated as protected, with the mudflats of the Wattenmeer National Park taking in the entire North Sea coast, and the Harz National Park extending over the state border into the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt.