For the former steel factory Ascoval, whose British buyer British Steel was placed in bankruptcy, "the game is not lost, far from it, and we will win," said Thursday Prime Minister Philippe.
"I am on this issue extremely cautious, but quite optimistic, I think we can do it," he said on Cnews about the rescue of the steel mill in Saint-Saulve (North), underlining the determination according to the buyer, local authorities and the government to "keep their commitments".
"Ascoval employees can be reassured"
"I really believe that Ascoval employees can be reassured that the buyer is determined to live up to the commitments he has made," he said, as did communities and the government. The British authorities announced on Wednesday that the steelmaker British Steel went bankrupt, plunging thousands of employees into uncertainty, barely a week after the recovery by this group of French steelmaker Ascoval.
The announcement again casts doubt on the viability of the French site, and the French government has since tried to reassure employees of the steel mill. Édouard Philippe explained Thursday that "the great difficulties" of the buyer was "very largely related to Brexit". "We knew that British Steel was in dire need of building production capacity in continental Europe because, placed in the United Kingdom, it could potentially no longer have access to its European customers," he said.