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The theme has become an essential subject of all presidential elections in recent years: industry, or rather as far as France is concerned, reindustrialisation. The promotion of “Making in France” is a recurring theme, but since the health crisis, this theme has gained consensus among candidates.
All the candidates have a word for this “great injured body” that is French industry. The shortages of masks, medicines, and electronic components during the health crisis were a powerful reminder that the French industrial fabric was fragile… It is the fruit of decades of deindustrialization. France lost one million industrial jobs between 2000 and 2016.
The causes are multiple and complex. This makes France dependent on foreign countries for essential goods while hampering its future development.
The candidates for the presidency of the Republic all go there with their recommendations
They all want to make it a national priority. In the name of sovereignty, independence, the fight against France’s record trade deficit. Last month, several candidates defended their vision before French employers. With the pretenders of the right insisting on the tool of taxation or the reduction of standards to improve the competitiveness of the sector.
And several candidates from both right and left advocate public procurement to support French factories. For all, the State must certainly invest, and massively, in French industry to revive it.
Last week, outgoing president and now candidate Emmanuel Macron defended his record on the matter
From the second paragraph of his “letter to the French”, Emmanuel Macron congratulates himself on having been the one who allowed the industry to recreate jobs. The outgoing executive has in recent weeks begun to defend his record. It has devoted two national plans to the industrial sector and several annual events for foreign investors.
The “France Relance” plan, launched in September 2020, has supported nearly 800 relocation projects, with 1.6 billion euros in subsidies and 3.8 billion in investments. The flagship measure of this plan is the reduction in production taxes. The Ministry of the Economy assures us: 100,000 jobs have been created ” Where “ comforted thanks to this plan.
As for the “France 2030” plan unveiled last October – thirty billion euros in five years – it will allow, recalls the president-candidate to invest in key sectors such as nuclear power, agriculture, batteries.
Meanwhile, in France, factories continue to close
This presidential campaign could once again be marked by the images of these abandoned sites. If the emblematic Ascoval electric steel plant in Saint-Saulve in the North avoids the relocation of part of its production, the SAM automobile foundry (Société Aveyronnaise de Métallurgie) in the south-west of France is, it, liquidated. Renault, its main contractor, preferred to rely on its factory in Romania, which is less expensive.
The more than three hundred employees were laid off. Some of them have occupied the factory for more than a hundred days. They intend to defend their production tool, in the event of a takeover of the site, which they consider strategic.
For these workers, their bitter experience summarizes the mistakes of industrial policies in France
Lack of investment in the production tool. Lack of reflection on a long-term strategy with which the workers would be associated, so as not to depend solely on the financial and short-termist logic imposed by the principals.
We must get out of the short-term logic to collectively set a course. This is what the commission of inquiry of the National Assembly recommended in January in its “roadmap” for the reindustrialization of France. Involve all stakeholders, including employees, in the reflection, in order to also overcome the divide between employees and bosses.
In their report, the deputies add that there needs to be a role, more assertive support from the State in companies defined as strategic, especially at a time when ecological imperatives call for a rapid transformation of the industry.