PARIS (MNI) – A leading French business leader denounced Thursday
as “scandalous” the government’s threat to nationalize a key steel plant
unless the owner relaunched activity there or sold it to a competitor.
To counter the plans of the steel multinational ArcelorMittal to
shut down definitively two blast furnaces at its Florange plant in
northeastern France at the cost of hundreds of jobs, Industry Minister
Arnaud Montebourg confirmed Wednesday that two industrialists were ready
to take over the whole plant and invest millions to reactivate the
furnaces.
Faced with the group’s refusal to sell, Montebourg brandished
recourse to a “temporary” nationalization of the plant and said that
President Francois Hollande had mentioned this option in tough talks
with the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who in turn threw into the
balance the 20,000 workers in Arcelor’s plants throughout the country.
In a radio interview, Laurence Parisot, president of the employer
group Medef, charged that the threat of “expropriation” was unacceptable
“blackmail” in the course of negotiations. “Our entire society is based
on the essential principle of the right to property,” she insisted.
It is not up to the government to tell managers how to run their
business, Parisot said. “Only the entrepreneur can know what is
profitable or not.” She reminded that Montebourg had “shocked” the
business world with his public criticism of the car maker Peugeot over
plans to close an assembly line north of Paris.
Such hostility to business is unnerving international investors,
Parisot claimed. They “no longer understand what’s going on in France.”
Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, however, told reporters
Wednesday the conflict over the Florange plant was not raised “at all”
in his recent discussions with “Anglo-Saxon” investors.
–Paris newsroom +331 4271 5540; email: ssandelius@mni-news.com
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