ArcelorMittal: Socialist Party proposes placing Dunkirk site under state supervision

Force the steel giant to continue its activity in Dunkirk and to preserve jobs, while a buyer is found or nationalized. This is the objective of a bill to place the state under "supervision" which is to be submitted shortly by the Socialist Party deputies, announce in an article published in the HuffPost the president of the group in the Assembly, Boris Vallaud , and the deputy of the North, Julien Gokel. "ArcelorMittal has not only plunged regions and employees into uncertainty and fear. The group has, once again, not kept its word or respected its commitments , " criticize the two elected officials.

On May 1st, several left-wing leaders, including Boris Vallaud, are demonstrating this Thursday morning in Dunkirk against a savings plan by the steelmaker, which includes 636 job cuts in France and a transfer of support activities to India involving 1,400 positions. The Socialist Party group in the National Assembly will therefore submit "in the coming days an emergency law" aimed at "placing the ArcelorMittal site in Dunkirk under state supervision," they announced.

This law, which is not scheduled for examination in Parliament at this stage, would require "the company to continue operating there and to preserve employment, including at a loss, for a given period" , in order to "find a buyer" , "investors" or "implement a partial nationalization" . The two deputies also call for "making any new public aid conditional" , or even converting it in the event of default into "shares and double voting rights" so that the State can influence the strategic decisions of the group from within, which they accuse of having "made no substantial investment in the production tool in France since 2013" , despite the public aid received.

Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure will also travel to Dunkirk on Thursday with his counterparts Marine Tondelier (Ecologists) and Fabien Roussel (PCF), and Green MPs François Ruffin and Benjamin Lucas. In a joint statement, they called for a series of measures, including customs protections, against Chinese steel imports and state intervention, including "temporary or permanent nationalization" if necessary.

This measure was also put forward by LFI, which was not involved in this statement and which will send a delegation of MPs to Dunkirk on Thursday, including the president of the Economic Affairs Committee, Aurélie Trouvé. The mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, a candidate for the leadership of the Socialist Party (PS), like Olivier Faure and Boris Vallaud, will also be there.