Emmanuel Duteil and Sandrine Prioul, in Cherbourg 3:53 p.m., September 16, 2021

Australia has decided to acquire nuclear-powered submarines in partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom, de facto canceling a € 31 billion contract with France.

For the industrial Naval Group, it is a real cold shower with still uncertain consequences.

DECRYPTION

It is a torpedoed contract: Australia has decided not to honor the contract that has linked it to France since 2016 for the delivery of conventional submarines, a contract worth more than 31 billion euros.

This choice can be explained by the country's alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom as part of a vast security partnership in the Indo-Pacific zone.

300 French already in Australia

On the French side, on the other hand, it is amazement, disbelief and disgust.

No one has strong enough words to denounce this reversal.

Everything was underway, while Naval Group already has nearly 300 people in Australia at the moment.

Contracts have already been signed with Australian subcontractors.

Of course, there were often rumors surrounding this contract.

Some had doubts that it would come to an end.

We knew he was regularly attacked, but at the highest level of the State, the Australians had assured that this contract would be honored.

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But there you go, Joe Biden and the United States screwed it up.

They stirred up the Chinese threat and put a three-way defense deal between Australia and Britain on the table.

The three leaders announced it late Wednesday evening with great fanfare.

France and its conventional submarines are sunk.

Make way for American nuclear submarines, which in any case risks casting a huge chill on relations between France and the United States. 

Concern in Cherbourg

In Cherbourg, where a Naval Group plant is located, crisis meetings follow one another, with the group's management, social partners and communications.

What about the employees who had been working in the city of Cotentin for five years on the Australian project?

What about these 300 French people who left for Adelaide to share their know-how?

Naval Group, flagship of the naval industry which has just seen its "contract of the century" stolen, is blaming it.

"There is a big economic and social impact. We are about 650 people in France and 300 in Australia, whether nationals or French. There is therefore a big subject of reclassification", estimates José Batista, Naval Group CFE-CGC union delegate.

What about the order book?

"The luck we have is that we have an order book which is nevertheless sufficiently generous and in particular in Cherbourg", tempers the unionist. "We are not too worried about the reclassification of staff. However, in terms of social, it is never obvious. We still had about forty families who were to come to Cherbourg in two weeks from Australia to settle down. precisely to continue the contract. And then, overnight, everything stops. " For Cherbourg employees, as for the whole group, we will have to get up after such a cataclysm.