President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday that steelmaker ArcelorMittal would invest 17 million euros ($23 million) in a struggling French plant, addressing a hot issue in the French presidential election campaign. The decline of France's manufacturing sector is a key issue in the April-May two-round election and Sarkozy is keen to contain announcements of major job losses during his re-election bid.
However, unions and local politicians from the opposition Socialist party in the eastern Moselle region greeted the news with scepticism, saying that most of the investment was already planned. "Yesterday (Wednesday) I had a long working meeting with (ArcelorMittal chief) Lakshmi Mittal... At the request of the French state, ArcelorMittal will now invest 17 million euros in Florange," Sarkozy told France Inter radio. Sarkozy said two million euros of the investment will be used for works on one of the plant's furnaces that will allow it to restart production in the second half of this year.
Another eight million euros will be invested "in order to develop new products at Florange destined... for the automobile market," Sarkozy said, and the remaining seven million euros invested in a coke plant. He said 500 of the plant's 2,667 employees had been at risk of losing their jobs.