Europe's carmakers are pressing the EU for an immediate cash injection of €15bn (£13.41bn) as Peugeot Citroën today underlined the scale of the market downturn with a net €343m loss.

Carlos Ghosn, head of Renault and ACEA, the car manufacturers' trade body, told European commissioners that the aid currently on offer was completely inadequate given the size of the sales slump. "This is urgently required also to retain the industry's capacity for innovation," he added.

He said: "We need immediate support as financial markets are shut down ... and we need financing for the longer term on attractive terms. We would love Europe to take the initiative and not leave it to national governments," he told reporters late last night.

Ghosn, who also heads Nissan, made his comments a day after the French government handed €3bn each to Renault and Peugeot Citroën. But he denied widespread accusations that the aid was protectionist and endangered the EU's single market.

Peugeot, meanwhile, said its global sales fell 5% to 3.26m units and revenues by 7.4% to €54.4bn, giving it an operating margin of just 1%. It blamed its full-year loss on the collapse of car markets in the final quarter of last year as credit froze.

The group, which has 13.8% of the western European market, making it the second-largest supplier after Volkswagen, said its decision to cut output and stocks in the final three months of 2008 were the main reasons for the swing to loss from earnings of €885m in 2007. It slashed costs by €1.4bn last year.

Christian Streiff, chief executive, said the priority – faced with the prospect of a long recession – was to cut stocks and stop burning cash. The group is shedding thousands of jobs and intends carrying on doing so, despite the government bail-out.

Streiff, under pressure to step down because of the pressures on earnings and sales, said he still hoped for a profitable outcome to 2010 – implying a full-year loss again in 2009.