In Dunkirk, is reindustrialization stalling? "If ArcelorMittal falls, the entire industry in the region will fall."
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Report: The French capital of industry—and pollution—which has lost 6,000 industrial jobs in twenty years, was banking on its green transition to turn things around. But ArcelorMittal's announcements are casting a chill.
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How long ago it seems when Emmanuel Macron chose Dunkirk to advertise, in a crowd bath and between two selfies, the “industrial reconquest” of the country… “We will not [create] yesterday’s industry, but a very decarbonized industry ,” promised the President of the Republic among the employees of Aluminium Dunkerque, the largest foundry in Europe. We are winning the battle!” That was in May 2023. Two years later, the steel giant ArcelorMittal has just announced the elimination of 636 jobs in the north of France, including 295 in Dunkirk. Some will be relocated to India. In the autumn, the steelmaker had already announced the postponement indefinitely of the €1.8 billion decarbonization plan (including €850 million in public aid) which was to put the Dunkirk site, by 2030, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. "If decarbonization does not happen, we have to fear the closure of the site," anticipates Gaëtan Lecocq, CGT general secretary of ArcelorMittal Dunkirk. A site that smokes up the northern city as much as it sustains it: 15% of national industrial CO2 emissions, 3,200 employees, around ten thousand including subcontractors and indirect jobs.
No more selfies, no more ministerial parades in Dunkirk. The job cuts plan, announced on April 23, was experienced as "a shock," admits Patrice Vergriete, the left-wing president of the urban community. Since then, he has been working with the LR president of the Hauts-de-France regional council, Xavier Bertrand, to challenge the State and obtain commitments from the world's second-largest steelmaker, which bought the French company Arcelor in 2006...
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