Michelin, ArcelorMittal, Vencorex, Valeo… not a week goes by without new layoffs in the French industry. Prime Minister Michel Barnier, traveling on Friday, November 29 to the Texelis equipment factory near Limoges (Haute-Vienne), attempted to respond to the crisis by presenting the government’s plan. “reindustrialize France”.
The executive specifically addresses the three industries: automobiles, steel and chemicals, proposing measures to other countries in the European Union (EU) to confront foreign competition, particularly Chinese competition.
To help the chemical sector, Paris wants to have the “strategic character” of fifteen molecules “essential for value chains” European industrial companies to protect them, based on the model of the plan on critical metals voted by the EU in May. For the steel industry, the Union must increase, according to France, its customs taxes on Chinese steel and review its import quotas decided in 2018.
Support companies in difficulty
As for the automobile, in addition to an emergency fund of 250 million euros to help the sector in France, the government continues to ask Brussels to eliminate the fines planned for 2025 for manufacturers that have not reduced their carbon emissions by 15 %. Michel Barnier, who could leave Matignon in the coming weeks in the event of a vote of no confidence against his 2025 finance bill, includes French proposals to the EU in a calendar of “100 days”.
At the national level, the Prime Minister confirmed on Friday the creation of a “working group” an inter-ministerial committee that will support companies in difficulty and the release of 1,550 million euros to finance the decarbonization of the fifty industrial centers that emit the most greenhouse gases.
Doing “more and better in terms of simplification”
Michel Barnier wants above all to relaunch the installation of industrial projects in the region, while the positive results since 2020 in terms of employment and factory creation are threatened by the record increase in bankruptcies since the beginning of the year. To further accelerate and simplify industrial facilities in the country, the head of Government announced “exempt” all industrial projects in the system “net zero artificialization” (ZAN) of soils, “for a period of five years”.
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